
■«» «»)i Wf"' 




HISTORICAL AND 

GEOGRAPHICAL 

NOTES 

i453_i5<^o 



By HENRY STEVENS gmb fsa ma vale etc 

Fellow of the Royal Geng & Zoological Societies of London 

Foreign Member of the Amer Antiq Society Corresp Member 

of the Historical Societies of Mass New York Connecticut 

Maine Vermont New Jersey Pennsylvania Wisconsin 

and Blk Bid Athm Clb Lend 

New Haven : Office of the American Journal of Science 
LoNDOK : Office of the Author No 4 Trafalgar Square 1869 




Congress of Badajos. 



7 J7/ 

HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

ON THE EARLIEST DISCOVERIES IN AMERICA 

1453 — 1530 



WITH COMMENTS ON THE EARLIEST CHARTS AND MAPS ; THE MIS 

TAKES OF THE EARLY NAVIGATORS & THE BLUNDERS OP THE 

GEOGRAPHERS ; THE ASIATIC ORIGIN OF THE ATLANTIC 

COAST LINE OF NORTH AMERICA HOW 

IT CREPT EN AND HOW IT 

CREPT OUT OF 

THE MAPS 

THE 

WHOLE 

ILLUSTRATED BY THE 

TEHUANTEPEC RAILWAY COMPANY'S 

MAP OF THE WORLD ON MERCATOR'S PRO 

JECTION AND PHOTO-LITHOGRAPHIC FAC-SIMILES 

OF MANY OF THE EARLIEST MAPS AND CHARTS OF AMERICA 



By henry STEVENS gmb ma etc 

SOMBTIMB8 STUDENT IN TAIB COLLEGE IN CONNECTICUT 
Now RESIDENT IN LONDON 




NEW HAVEN: OFFICE OF THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 
LONDOK : HENRT STEVENS 4 TRAFALGAR SQUARE 

1869 






Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1869 by 

HENRY STEVENS 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Connecticut 



A few copies printed for presents— N^ U Q -/"> U^tv rc-U.t 
Rflvfintv-five cor)ies printed for sale — N° " 



Seventy-five copies printed for sale — N 



jH-tyV-t-iH' <^ Ui.^-cyi^i-<i 



7Z 



yli^cZ ^^ '^~Jo 



TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TATLOR, PBDJTEBS, 

221 State St, New Haven, Conn. 



To 

JAMES LENOX 

WHOSE CONSTANT CORRESPONDENCE FOR MORE THAN TWENTY 

YEARS RESPECTING THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE EAST 

AS WELL AS THE WEST HAS ENCOURAGED 

THE WRITER AND STIMULATED 

HIS INVESTIGATIONS 

THESE PAGES 

ARE 

GRATEFULLY AND CORDIALLY INSCRIBED 



EXPLANATORY 



Notwithstanding the assiduity of his researches and the pains he has taken to extricate facts 
from the confusion of different authors, as what is true does not always appear possible, and 
what appears possible is not always true, he has not entirely succeeded, though he has done all 
that could be expected.— Cullen on Clavigero, 



In February last the writer was asked by bis brother, Mr. 
Simon Stevens of New York, President of the Tebuantepec Rail- 
way Company, to contribute to bis forthcoming book on Tebu- 
antepec, an Historical Introduction on the earliest discoveries 
in America, and on the routes of commerce of the Old "World, 
tracing their changes, especially so far as they had any direct 
bearing on his project of Interoceanic Communication by way 
of the Isthmus of Tebuantepec. The writer accepted the op- 
portunity, not expecting perhaps so much to aid the enterprise 
as to give shape and expression to certain ideas that had for 
years been floating and growing in his mind respecting the en- 
tanglement, in our earliest charts, of the northeast coast lines of 
Asia and North America, and the confusion growing out of it, 
in the early history, geography, and chronology of the new Con- 
tinent. In rejDrinting that paper here, with considerable revi- 
sion and emendation, necessary to harmonize it, he finds it con- 
venient to throw the chief additional matter into an explanatory 
preface, rather than rewrite the whole. 



8 

Recently vast stores of material of American history have 
been brought to light. Old books and maps have turned up. 
Bibliography has become an exact science. Documents are 
scrutinized anew, as they never were before. New histor- 
ical books have been written, old ones revived, annotated, edited 
and reproduced, to such an extent that half an American his- 
torian's labor, before he begins his narrative, consists in clear- 
ing away the rubbish of his predecessors, and in reconciling 
conflicting authorities. There is something manifestly wrong 
in this, for the honest Muse of History is not such a muddler. 
Truth is not so obscured in the other coast lines of this hemi- 
sphere. 

In 1793 appeared the first volume of Munos' great work. 
The death of the author prevented its continuation. His man- 
uscripts and his mantle fell to Senor Navarrete, who published 
in 1825 his first two volumes on the voyages of Columbus, 
though the learned compiler had been diligently at work in of- 
ficial and private archives since 1789, under the patronage of 
the Spanish government. Then followed in quick succession, 
in 1828, a translation into French of Navarrete's volumes, with 
additions by prominent members of the Greographical Society 
of Paris. The same year Washington Irving gave to the world 
his Life of Columbus, built confessedly upon Navarrete's found- 
ation. The year 1830 brought forth in London The History of 
Maritime Discovery, followed and cut to pieces the next year 
by Biddle's Memoir of Sebastian Cabot, which in turn was 
roughly handled in 1832 in Tytler's Historical View of the 
Northern Coasts of America. Finally in 1835-1839, after long 
and gigantic research, appeared Humboldt's Examen Critique, a 
digest of all that had preceded it respecting the causes that led 
to the discovery of the New "World ; the facts and dates of the 
voyages of Columbus, the Cabots, Vespucci, and others ; the ear- 
liest maps and charts, etc. 

This incomparable work was a masterly survey of the whole 
field of early American geography, and though unfinished has " 
been the parent of innumerable minor productions. The large 
marine chart of the World by Juan de la Cosa, discovered by 
Humboldt in 1832, was here used for the first time, and was in 
many respects the great philosopher's grand card. More re- 



cently tlie labors of Kuritsmann in Municli, of Santarem and 
Joniard in Paris, of Ghillany in Nuremberg, of Eawdon Brown 
in Venice, of Bergenrotb in Spain, have brought to light valu- 
able original material illustrative of maritime discovery prior 
to 1492, as well as of the voyages of Columbus, Vespucci, the 
Cabots, Behaim, and others. Still more recently many subjects 
of great interest and importance pertaining to our earliest ge- 
ography have been elaborated by Messrs. LaSagra, Lelewel, 
D'Avezac, Varnhagen, Major, Peschel, Bancroft, Helps, Park- 
man, B. Smith, Murphy, Lenox, Asher, Hale, Eead, Deane, and 
not least by Brevoort, until one is ready to exclaim of the old voy- 
agers. Are their ways past finding out ? Yet there still exists 
the old entanglement in the American and Asiatic coast lines 
and the old confusion in our primitive annals and geography. 

A. new summing up of North American discovery has ap- 
peared in a magnum opus published in April of this year by 
the Maine Historical Society, nominally the History of the Dis- 
covery of Maine, but really the history of the discovery of 
the whole eastern coast of North America. This learned work 
by John G. Kohl, ll.d. is presumed to be the culmination of 
all that is known and recorded on this vast subject from Adam 
of Bremen to Kohl of Bremen, and may therefore be held as 
the present state of the history of North American geography 
and discovery. 

There is appended to the Maine volume a remarkable pa- 
per on the four voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot, by M. 
D'Avezac of Paris, in which the distinguished French geog- 
rapher, on several important points, expresses views precisely 
opposite to those of Dr. Kohl. Both of course cannot be right, 
but this affords an apt illustration of the present confused con- 
dition of our geography. However, whether in all respects the 
Maine volume will stand the test of criticism or not, the Histor- 
ical Society of Maine is deserving of high commendation for 
having so boldly and so honestly put forth this expensive for- 
eign production, amply illustrated as it is with facsimiles (ut 
vulgo) of no less than twenty-tliree of the earliest maps. The 
whole question is now brought down to date and set up between 
two boards for public view and judgment. No geographer has 
as yet done the work better, and the only wonder is that Dr. 



10 

Kohl could have done so much and so well, even from his point 
of view, in the short time allowed him. But — 

Still the writer does not find his cravings for true and exact 
history satisfied. The words may, perhaps, and probably, are 
the menials of Fiction, seldom of History. Another method of 
treating our ancient records, he has thought, might possibly 
throw new light on the old geographical puzzles that have come 
down to us from and before the Great Discoverer, and reveal the 
key. The truth is that the history of the early voyages is so 
bemuddled by recent writers (and the newly discovered old ma- 
terials seem only to add to the confusion) that nothing short of 
an entke overhauling of first principles, and resifting of facts, 
aided by rigid chronology and compound scrutiny, will enable 
us to take clear observations, to ascertain our bearings and show 
us whither we have drifted these four hundred years. The 
writer does not pretend that he is competent to do this himself, 
though he owns to the consumption of no little midnight petro- 
leum in trying to read old records by the new light. He has 
attempted, after many years of bibliographical study, to step 
into the shoes of the old navigators, pilots and cosmogi'aphers, 
to see as they saw, beginning fifty years before, and coming down 
to half a century after Columbus, taking up the sequence of 
events as they occurred, and excluding rigidly all subsequent 
testimony. 

In the following paper the writer has given a rapid sketch of 
some of his observations from this point of view. A few of 
them are sufficiently startling if true, but require, no doubt, 
further elucidation and a full declaration of authorities. These, 
when space is more abundant. Meanwhile the reader is invited 
to study well the accompanying photo-lithographic facsimiles 
of some of the oldest and most important maps and charts per- 
taining to our coasts. It is not pei-mitted to every one to see 
and touch the precious originals, scattered and secluded as they 
are, in various public and private repositories, throughout Europe 
and America. Not three persons exist probably who have seen 
them all. The copies here given, imperfect as they are, speak 
clearly to the eye, and will doubtless repay careful examination, 
though a few explanations may aid the reader in understanding 
them. 



11 

And first, The Portolano, or marine chart of Juan de la Cosa, 
made bj him at Puerto de Santa Maria, near Cadiz, in 1500 
[Plate r). The original, bought at a public sale in Paris about 
twenty years ago, for the Queen of Spain, against the writer, 
for 4020 francs, is now preserved in the Eoyal Library at Mad- 
rid. It is on oxhide, five feet nine inches long, by three feet 
two inches wide, cut square off at the tail, a little beyond the 
Ganges and Golden Chersonesus, so as to be attached to a rol- 
ler ; and rounded at the back of the neck, so as to be tied with 
a ribbon when rolled up after the manner of ancient portolani. 
The whole world is laid down, including the entire 360 degrees 
of longitude, on a given scale of fifteen Spanish leagues to a 
degree. The chart is well drawn, in colors and heightened with 
gold, altogether a work of art of considerable pretention. It 
is acknowledged by competent judges, to be the earliest, the 
most important and the most authentic geographical monument 
relating to the western discoveries that has come down to us. 
It was not discovered until after Munos, Navarrete, Irving, Biddle 
and Tytler had written their works, and hence Humboldt used it 
constantly and with effect in his Examen Critique^ as well as in his 
supplemental chapter prefixed to Ghillany's Martin Behaim in 
1853. A full sized facsimile was published by M. Jomard, on 
three double elephant folio sheets, some fifteen years ago. Of 
the western sheet, or third, not colored, the accompanying re- 
duced facsimile is taken. La Sagra, Lelewel, Ghillany, Kohl 
and others have used it extensively and described it. All ge- 
ographers admit its importance, but many raise objections 
greatly diminishing its authority. 

These objections have hitherto, by learned geogi'aphers, been 
deemed unanswerable. They are : First, That Cuba is repre- 
sented as an island in the year 1500, and is misshaped at the 
western extremity by curving to the south so as to form a 
kind of gulf, when in fact it was not ascertained to be an 
island till Ocampo circumnavigated it in 1508, and found it to 
extend considerably farther to the west than La Cosa's, and hav- 
ing no such curve. Second, that the American coast line ex- 
tending from a point west of Cuba to the Mar desuhierta por 
Yngleses gives no proper idea of the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, 
New York, Cape Cod and other strongly marked coasts, in fact 

2 



12 

is mere guess work. Thirds that the discoveries of the Cabots 
and Cortereals are not properly laid down, and that the coast line 
does not resemble that from Cape Race westward. And fourth, 
that "the map has no indication of the degrees of latitude " 
(Kohl, p. 152) and longitude. 

These four objections answered, Juan de la Cosa is vindicated, 
and his chart becomes the authority. Let us look at them. 
Answer, First, that La Cosa, the Maestro de hacer cartas, as Co- 
lumbus styled his chart-maker, did not intend to represent Cuba 
to be an island (whatever posterity may think of his di-aw- 
ing) is manifest from the following facts. Li the spring of 1494 
after Columbus, in his second voyage, had sent home from His- 
paniola (his Zipangu or Japan) the larger part of his fleet un- 
der Antonio de Torres, he resolved with three caravels and 
about eighty men, to go on an exploring expedition along the 
south side of Cuba (which he for sometime persisted in naming 
Juana) supposing it to be continental, or that part of Asia near 
Mangi. This little fleet reached Cuba on the last day of April 
at a point named Cabo de Fundabril, previously called by Co- 
lumbus Cape Alpha and Omega, the point where the "West ends 
and the East begins. Proceeding westward they touched at 
many places, the names of most of which, laid down by La 
Cosa, can readily be recognized in the narratives of the Cura 
de los Palacios and Peter Martyr, as well as in later maps. 
These names are Cabo de Cruz, Cabo del Serpienta, Fumos, Cabo 
Serafin, Mangni, Mont, Bienbaso, &c. At length they came to a 
turn in the coast to the southwest. This place Columbus 
named Cabo de Bienespera, or Cape of Good Hope, a guiding 
point leading him on toward the Golden Chersonesus, the 
bourne of his hopes. 

Here on the 12th of June, 1494, Columbus, being compelled 
from shortness of provisions and other reasons, to turn back, 
caused his captains, his pilots, his master of charts, and all his 
sailors to sign a declaration under oath, that they believed Cuba 
to be part of the Continent of Asia, near Mangi ; and Juan de 
la Cosa added the further particulars that he never saw and 
never heard tell of any island 835 leagues long, and hence he 
believed Cuba to be in Asia. A little further on to the south- 
southwest, amid shoals and islands, picking his way and grazing 



13 

the sands, Columbus reached another place which he named Evan- 
gelista. Here, from the mast head, one might see coasts to the 
north, the Bay of Cortes and the Cayos de Indios to the west* 
and land to the southwest and south, the whole, with islands 
and keys, appearing continuous so as to form a gulf of consid- 
erable extent studded with islets. This body of water Colum- 
bus mistook for the Gulf of Granges ! " Indise Gangetidis con- 
tinentem eam esse plagam contenditColonus," wrote Peter Mar- 
tyr to Cardinal Bernardino, August, 1495, on the authority of 
a letter to him from Columbus himself. This place was the 
farthest point touched in the expedition, " hanc ultimam exist- 
emati continentis oram quam ille [Columbus] attigit, vocavit 
Evangelistam," again wrote P. Martyr. The Admiral longed to 
go on down the coast, double the Golden Chersonesus, visit 
Calicut and Arabia, and so return to Spain, ever going west, 
but necessity compelled him, the next day, to set his face to- 
ward Hispaniola. 

Here then have we not the key of this mystery, the parent of 
a hundred geographical blunders, in later maps ? Evangelista 
is on the west side of the Isle of Pines, the Cape of Good Hope 
is on Cuba to the N.N.E. near Batabano, and a dash of green 
paint, the conventional color for terra incognita in old portolani, 
marks a "cut-off" and completes the Gulf of Ganges! This 
simple cut-oif shows that all beyond was unknown. Three days 
more, had Columbus persevered toward the west, would have 
brought him to the end of Cuba, and dispelled all his grand 
visions of the Province of Mangi, and the incomparable riches 
of the Grand Kahn of Cathay. Cuba is then here not an island, 
but is merely cut off in the usual way by La Cosa himself 
who was there with the Admiral, and who laid down the track 
of the whole expedition with marvellous truthfulness.''^ 

* Ruysch, seven years later (PL 2, No. 3) understood this perfectly, and in his 
Continental Cuba marked this cut-ofif more distinctly. He has preserved the "Gulf 
of Gauges," but has disguised some of the names of places. Cape Seraphin where 
the white priest was seen, is changed to Cvlcar [c. vicar ?] and Evangelista to C. S. 
Marci, one of the EvangeUsts. The south side of Cuba is a literal copy of La 
Cosa's chart laid down from actual survey in company with Columbus himself, but 
the north side considered as part of Asia beyond Zipangu, is carried up to about 
40'^ N. latitude, above C. Elicontii the same as in Era Mauro's map of 1457 and 
Behaim's globe of 1492. The German geographers of St Die and Stras- 
burg, (who probably never saw salt water) in their map in the Ptolemy of 1513, 



u 

The answer to tlie second objection, as to the American coast 
line from the west of Cuba to Bacalaos is simply that La Cosa 
intended that line for Asia, In 1500 neither he nor anj^body 
else suspected or dreamed of an intervening Continent. La Cosa 
projected a map of the whole world, the Eastern Asia of Marco 
Polo and Sir John Mandeville included. Cutting his map off 
at the Golden Chersonesus, beyond the Granges, so as to attach 
it to a roller, how else could he complete Asia and the 360 de- 
grees of longitude but by the line he drew on the other side of 
the globe ? Asia and America are not both laid down. Which 
is omitted ? If this line be the unknown new Continent, what 

probably made as early as 1508, (PL 2, No. 1) have copied La Cosa and Ruysch both, 
making Spagnola and Isabella answer for the Japanese islands, all the names being 
transferred to their Continental Cuba with most of the names of La Cosa and Ruysch 
Italianized, and almost obscured in the transfer. Corveo, Anterlinoi, Cvlcar and 
Lago de Loro of Ruysch become Coruello, G. delinor, C. lurcar, and lago dellodro in 
the 1513, while C. EUcontii becomes C. delicontir. La Cosa's Mar Oceanus, north 
of Cuba, becomes C. del mar usiano and is carried up to latitude 54°. The Gulf of 
Granges is not only preserved, with all the islands of La Cosa, but the three mouthed 
Ganges itself is made to empty into the gulf! All this Terra de Cuba was thought 
somehow, to pertain to Asia, for no one yet had dreamed of an mtervening conti- 
nent. 

The north side of Cuba in La Cosa's chart, west of Rio Mares (the farthest 
point reached by Colimibus in his first voyage, the 31st of October, 1492,) is col- 
ored as terra incognita having no defined coast line. The very accurate manner in 
which the whole coast eastward of this point is laid down renders it almost certain 
that La Cosa accompanied Columbus also in his first voyage as his Maestro de 
Cartas. If so, considering his subordinate position, may not this be in substance 
the long lost chart of Columbus ? The names on the north side of Cuba between 
Rio Mares and Cabo de Fundabril written in full are no Mares, no Luna, Cabo de 
Cuba, punta de Mar Nuestra Senora, punta de Santa Maria, Cabo Rico, Puerto 
Santo, rio de la Vega, Cabolindo and ponta de Cuba, corresponding almost exactly 
with the log book or journal of the first voyage of Coliunbus as preserved by Las 
Casas. 

The conclusions therefore to which all these old facts and new readings force one 
are obvious, and opposed to the generally expressed opinions of geographers. It 
should, however, be mentioned that Senlior Varnhagen, an earnest and painstaking 
investigator, whose opinions are generally entitled to the highest respect, in his val- 
uable work on Vespucci, printed in Lima, in 1865, in folio, differs from the writer, 
interpreting the bay, the three mouthed river, and the point of land, west of Isa- 
bella, in the 1513 map, to be the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River, and Florida. 
It is difficult, on this theory, to account for the island of Isabella being denuded 
of its names, and the weU-known Cabo Fundabril being transferred to Florida. 
The influence of La Cosa's chart, and the later maps interpreted by its new read- 
ings, wUl no doubt shed much new light on Vespucci's letters and voyages. 



15 

has lie done witli tlie well known part of the old Continent ? 
Furthermore, where are Zipangu and the islands of the Eastern 
Archipelago described by Marco Polo and so ardently sought by 
Columbus? If Cuba be Zaiton or Mangi, surely Hispaniola 
must be Zipangu [PL 2, No. 8] How else could Columbus 
reason ? Let it be borne in mind that there is great similarity 
in the coasts of Eastern Asia and America. From all this it is 
apparent that La Cosa and his map are not responsible for erro- 
neous conclusions drawn by modem geographers. 

The third objection, respecting the coast line of the Cabots 
and the Cortereals, from Cape Kace westward, may be met by 
the fact that La Cosa has laid down no such line. Cape Race is 
in latitude 46° 40', and Cape Sable in Nova Scotia, is 43° 24'. 
La Cosa's coast line in the north, marked by five English flags, 
begins at latitude 53° N. that is the Straits of Belle Isle, and 
extends very nearly west to the meridian of the Virgin Islands. 
It is, in short, the northern coast of the Gulf of St Lawrence, pret- 
ty accurately depicted. Of course it is to be understood that 
the Cabots in 1497, as well as La Cosa in 1500, supposed this 
coast to be in Eastern Asia. This chart carefully compared with 
Sebastian Cabot's map of 1544 [PL 4, No. 1,] and studied with 
the new material lately brought to light by Mr. Rawdon Brown 
in Venice, and Mr. Bergenroth in Madrid, will, it is believed, 
harmonize well, as contemporary documents, and throw into the 
shade the loose gossip, long after date, reported by Butrigarius, 
Peter Martyr and Mr. Secretary Williamson. The words Mar 
descubierta por Yw^Zese^,. instead of Mar Oceanus, show it to be 
a sea or gulf and not the open ocean. If the reader will lay 
down on La Cosa's chart Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, 
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in their proper latitudes and 
longitudes, he will doubtless be sui"prised at the result, espe- 
cially when he compares it with the map of F. Gr. in Hakluyt's 
Peter Martyr of 1587 [PL 3, No. 1]. In this map Bacalaos is 
laid down as discovered by the English under the grant of 1496 
on the north coast of the Gulf of St Lawrence. The discoveries 
of the Cortereals could not have been known by La Cosa in 
1500. 

The fourth objection is answered by simply looking for a mo- 
ment at the original map, or at M. Jomard's facsimile, and not at 



16 

the imperfect ones generally in use. The indications of lati- 
tude and longitude are abundant, and there is a good scale both 
at the top and the bottom of the chart. The equator is given, 
and the tropic of Cancer, 23.^°, and guiding lines or parallels pass 
through the Straits of Gibraltar, 36°, and Paris, 48° 40'. These 
fixed points, with the scale, will help the reader to the latitude of 
any other place. Longitude can be determined in a similar way. 

The eclipse that took place in Sept. 1494, immediately after 
his return to Hispaniola from Cuba, was a most important event 
for Columbus, because it enabled him to determine the longi- 
tude of his discoveries. He found that the middle of Hispani- 
ola was nearly five hours west of Seville, or about 70°. La 
Cosa's scale makes this distance to be about 68°, sufiiciently 
near, considering the mode of measuring time then, before 
Copernicus had commanded the sun to stand still. Columbus' 
mistakes in latitude are difficult to be accounted for, but they 
do not affect the observations of the Cabots in the north, or 
those of Vespucci and Ojeda in the south, as very accurately 
laid down by La Cosa. Columbus in his log book places 
Cuba and Hispaniola some seven or eight degrees too far north. 
He seems however to have been aware that he was oat in his 
calculations, and on one occasion threw aside his instruments as 
defective, preferring to defer his observations till he reached the 
land. La Cosa has however retained all these errors of latitude 
of the first and second voyages, though he is nearly correct in 
his latitude of the northern coast of South America. 

Now if these objections are fairly answered, La Cosa not only 
emerges cleared from a Vast amount of unjust criticism, but his 
chart becomes a beacon of light in the early annals of America. 
It tells posterity, as it is told nowhere else so truthfully, of Co- 
lumbus, his discoveries and his mistakes, and depicts in honest 
lines just how far the Great Explorer gi^oped his way blind- 
folded toward the west. The American historian has no longer 
any difficulty in tracing the track of Columbus to the very end, 
and accounting for the true and false lines in his continental or 
Asiatic Cuba. He sees how the Asiatic lines grew in the map 
of Kuysch of 1508, while those of La Cosa remained the same ; 
how also in the maps of Bernard Sylvanus in 1511, of the 
Gymnasium of St Die in 1513, of the Margarita Philosophica 



17 

in 1515, of Apian and Schoner in 1520, of Bordone in 1521, 
of Lawrence Fries in 1522, of Orontius Fine in 1581, and of 
Sebastian Muenster in the Grynaeus of 1532. In all these old 
maps the geographer can at a glance, now that the key is re- 
covered, trace the true coast lines, for he knows the origin of 
the false ones, thanks to painstaking La Cosa, Considering the 
state of geographical, astronomical, and nautical knowledge at 
that time, and the muddle of the map-makers, it is not to be 
wondered at that the discoveries of Balboa, of Magellan, of 
Cortes, of Ponce de Leon and Ayllon, led to some bewilder- 
ment, and puzzled even the cognoscenti of the Congress of 
Badajos. 

It is to be borne in mind here, however, that many writers 
claim that the Cabots in 1497 and 1498 discovered and explored 
the coast of the present United States from Nova Scotia to the 
Chesapeak Bay, and some even contend that the Cape of Florida 
was reached ; and hence, as every thing was immediately known 
in Spain, the discovery of the entire North American coast 
might have been known to La Cosa in time to be laid down in 
its general trending though not with accuracy in 1500, from John 
Cabot's own map, which the Spanish minister in London de- 
clares he saw. It matters not whether La Cosa and John Cabot 
thought it the coast of Asia or an intervening Continent, if it 
was really laid down from actual observation. But La Cosa 
positively limits, in a very definite manner, the discoveries of 
the English, to the Mar^ or Gulf of St Lawrence. And the 
highly important Portuguese portolano, made about 1514, one 
of the earliest and honestest maps known (Plate Y) after adding 
the discoveries of the Cortereals, and Ponce de Leon, leaves the 
whole space from Nova Scotia to Charleston open, as being 
entirely unknown. Now these writers are invited to recollect 
that all the testimonj^ on which these theories are based is not 
only very loose, but recorded in a gossipping way, sometimes 
second and even third handed, long subsequent to the event g 
themselves, and have since been quoted and maintained with 
national asperity, chiefly in diplomatic discussions and some- 
times without a proper regard for historic truth. While on the 
other hand all the contemporary documents recently found tend 
to show that the Cabots' discoveries were confined to the Gulf 



18 

of St Lawrence and north of it. La Cosa's testimony is strong, 
nor does Sebastian Cabot's own map made in 1544, said to have 
been engraved by Clement Adams, containing the new discov- 
eries of the English, French, Spanish and Portuguese to 1542, 
(Plate IV, N° 1) in the least invalidate it. 

The new papers of 1497-98 brought to light from the Ar- 
chives of Simancas and Venice give details only of John Cabot 
and his voyage of 1497, and simply allude to the expedition of 
1498 as not yet returned. Nothing on contemporary authority 
is known of this latter voyage or of Sebastian Cabot's connec- 
tion with it. It is always dangerous to attempt the proof of a 
negative, for any day new documents may turn up. Don 
Pedro de Ayala wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella from London 
the 25th July, 1498, of John Cabot, "I have seen the map 
which the discoverer has made who is another Genaise^ like 
Columbus, and who has been in Seville and in Lisbon, asking 
assistance for his discoveries. The people of Bristol have, for 
the last seven years, sent out every year two, three or four 
caravels in search of the island of Brazil and the Seven Cities, 
according to the fancy of this Genoise. The king determined 
to send out [more ships this year, 1498] because last year they 
brought certain news that they had found land." This passage 
is positive, important and suggestive. In the first place it dis- 
poses of the pretence that the Continent was discovered on the 
24th of June, 1494, instead of 1497, and it suggests a plausible 
theory to account for John Cabot's movements between the 
granting of his charter in March, 1496, and the sailing of his 
ship in May, 1497. During part of this long year this Genois 
might have been with his fellow townsman Columbus at Seville, 
who had just returned from his second voyage of three years, 
bringing his chart-master, Juan de La Cosa with him. Cabot 
was a Venetian only by naturalization. This is of course only a 
suggestion, but it shows the early connection of the Cabots with 
Spain, if not with Columbus and La Cosa. 

It is well known, however, that Sebastian Cabot in October, 
1512, was residing at Seville, with a royal commission in his 
pocket as Captain, awaiting orders, in the service of the King 
of Spain, Here he became the intimate friend of Peter Martyr 
of the Council of the Indies, and shortly after became a mem- 



19 

ber of that board himself. A little later, rising in honors and 
salary, he became in 1518 the Pilot Major of Spain, and in 
1524 was deputed to preside over the celebrated geographical 
Congress of Badajos. Now in these several official positions it 
was his duty to superintend and watch over all the discoveries 
and explorations of the Spanish navigators. He was a man of 
vast experience and was presumed to know all that had been 
discovered by his contemporaries. Is it reasonable, therefore, 
to suppose that if he had been down the coast from Bacalaos 
in 1498 to 30° or to 25°, he would in 1513, in 1520, in 1524 and 
1526, have yielded without a word of protest, these discoveries, to 
Ponce de Leon, Ayllon and Gomez, to say nothing of Veraz- 
zano. No writer pretends to deprive these navigators of their 
rights as discoverers, and no protest or contemporary claim is 
forthcoming from Sebastian Cabot, who was all the time in the 
field and well acquainted with the affairs. 

Before 1520 the Portuguese began to comprehend better the 
longitude of the Moluccas and other of theii' possessions in the 
East, and geographers began to suspect an intervening space 
not accounted for. At iirst strange guesses were recorded as to 
the extent and direction of the South Sea, by Schoner and oth- 
ers, but after the appearance of the map of Cortes [PI. 4 No. 7] 
in 1524, the culmination of absurdity appeared in the double- 
hearted projection of Orontius Fine in July, 1531, [PI. 3, No. 3 
and 4]. Schoner in describing his own newly improved globe 
in 1532, exactly describes this map. The South Sea was re- 
presented as south of the equator, while Asia was brought for- 
ward to Bacalaos. One can readily see how all this grew up, as 
one can also see how, by slow degTces, their false Asia receded 
and melted away, for above 200 years, as the western coast of 
America and the eastern coast of Asia were explored by Span- 
ish, English, French and Russian navigators, till the year 1727, 
when a strait was opened by Behring, and Asia and America 
became divorced. 

It was the writer's intention to try and trace out the history 
of the first exploration of the entire coast of the United States, 
until the last thread of the Asiatic line was expunged by Capt. 
John Smith before 1614. But that labor, even if he had time 
and space, is reserved for an abler pen. The Rev. Dr. Leonard 

3 



20 

Woods, late President of Bowdoin College, has on the anvil as 
already announced, for the Maine Historical Society's next vol- 
ume, an original unpublished manuscript of Richard Hakluyt, 
of the highest historical and geographical interest. It is en- 
titled " A particular discourse concerning the greate necessitie 
and manifold comodyties that are like to grow to this Realme 
of Englande by the westerne discoveries lately attempted, writ- 
ten in the yere 1584, by Richarde Hakluyt ... at the requeste 
of Mr. Walter Raleigh before the comynge home of his two 
Barkes [from Virginia]," &c. This valuable manuscript, con- 
sisting of sixty -three large closely written folio pages, was in 
the possession of the writer for two or three years, having fallen 
into his hands some sixteen or seventeen years ago by a piece 
of good luck, after a bibliographical tournament memorable as 
any recorded by Dibdin. After fruitless endeavors to find for 
it a resting place in some public or private libraiy in America, 
and subsequently in the British Museum, it finally became the 
property of Sir Thomas Phillipps. So impressed was the 
writer with its importance that immediately on learning the ob- 
ject of Dr. Wood's mission to England in the autumn of 1867, 
he called the doctor's attention to it, and suggested his procuring 
a copy, if possible, for publication by the Maine Historical So- 
ciety. He trusts soon to have the pleasure of seeing Richard 
Hakluyt again in print, not alone because he is an old friend, 
but because he is likely to render any further discussion of the 
present subject, on the part of the wiiter, superfluous. 



HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
1453-1530 



A retrospect of four centiiries, with a rapid glance at the 
progress of modern discovery, exploration and invention, will 
probably serve as an appropriate introduction to our projected 
scheme of Interoceanic Communication by means of the Tehu- 
antepec Eailway, and show that the time is near at hand for its 
accomplishment. Let us, therefore, go back for a moment, and 
survey the little old world and its inhabitants as they appeared 
about the middle of the fifteenth century. According to Ptol- 
emy, the best recognized authority, whose geography had stood 
the test of thirteen hundred years, the then known world was 
a strip of some seventy degrees wide, mostly north of the equa- 
tor, with Cadiz on the west, and farthest India or Cathay on the 
east, lying between the frozen and burning zones, both impassa- 
ble by man. The inhabitants, as far as known in Europe, were 
Christians and Mohamedans, the one sect about half the age of 
the other. Christendom, the elder, that once held considerable 
portions of Asia and Africa, had been driven back inch by inch, 
in spite of the Crusades, even from the Holy Land, the place of 
its birth, up into the northwest corner of Europe ; and both in 
lands and people was outnumbered six to one by the followers 
of Mahomet. For seven hundred years the fairest provinces of 
Spain acknowledged the sway of the Moors, and the Mediter- 
ranean, from Jaffa to the Grates of Hercules, was under their 
control. The crescent was constantly encroaching on the cross ; 
while Christendom, schismatic, dismayed, demoralized and dis- 
heartened, seemed almost incapable of further resistance. 

India beyond the Granges, from the days of Moses, Alexan- 
der, and Aristotle, to say nothing of the geographers Pompo- 
nius Mela, Strabo and Ptolemy, was deemed the land of prom- 
ise, the abode of luxury, the source of wealth, and the home of 



22 

the spices ; but tlie routes of commerce thither, via Venice and 
Genoa, by the Red Sea, Egypt, the Nile, Arabia, Asia Minor, 
the Black and Caspian Seas, through Persia and Tartary, were 
one by one being closed to Christians. The profits of the over- 
land carrying trade were mostly in the hands of the Arabians, 
who inherited it from the Romans ; but Memphis, Thebes, and 
Cairo, that flourished by it, had declined as it fell off, and yielded 
to Alexandria nearer the sea. Finally, in 1453, Constantino- 
ple, the Christian city of Constantine, fell into the hands of the 
Turks, and with it the commerce of the Black Sea and the Bos- 
phorus, the last of the old trading routes from the East to the 
West. Christendom for a time was disconsolate, and could only 
" pray for the contention of the Turks." The whole of the car- 
rying trade passed into the hands of middle men or agents, who 
passed goods without uev,"s, and India became more a land of 
mystery than ever ; but this apparent misfortune proved to be 
the beginning of a new and brighter era. 

The learned Christians of Constantinople, with nothing but 
their heads and their books, fled in exile into Italy, and became 
its schoolmasters. At once began there the revival of learning, 
which soon extended throughout the West. " Westward the 
course of empire takes its way." The Medici family of Italy, 
at Venice and Florence, welcomed these learned Greeks, and 
bought their precious manuscripts of ancient lore. The gun- 
powder of Europe had akeady silenced the Greek Fke of Asia. 
On the Rhine the young printing press was just giving forth its 
first sheets. The compass and the astrolabe, recent inventions, 
began now to give confidence to mariners and teach them that, 
though the old paths of trade overland were closed, they might 
venture on new ones over sea. In 1453, in western Europe 
there was no tea, no coffee, no tobacco, no Indian corn, no po- 
tatoes ; and many of the necessities of our day were not even 
known as luxuries. Though the Crusades had failed in their 
immediate objects, they had exposed the secrets of the India 
trade, and the vast revenues of the eastern cities. The manu- 
script travels of Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville had found 
their way into the hands of thinking men. Venice was already 
waning, preparatory to yielding its trade to Portugal, the then 
most rising and active maritime power. Prince Henry the Nav- 



23 

igator liad still ten years to live to carry out his great schemes 
of discovery and exploration of the western coast of Africa. 
He was an ambitious student of geography, history, mathemat- 
ics, astronomy, and navigation, and for almost forty years had 
stood alone. 

At the early age of fifteen the Prince had a successful 
brush with the Moors at Ceuta, opposite Gibraltar ; and by 1418 
had crept down the coast of Africa to Cape Nun, lat. 28° 40', 
the southern boundary of Morocco. In 1434 his captains doub- 
led Cape Boyador, and seven years after obtained from Pope 
Martin V a grant to the crown of Portugal of all he should dis- 
cover from this cape to the Indies. In 1442 Eio del Oro was 
reached, and gold and negro slaves brought back. These were 
two real stimulants to Portuguese discoveiy, avarice, pride, and 
wealth, though the conversion of the infidels to Christianity, 
was, no doubt, a strong additional motive power. The reintro- 
duction of negro slavery, and the part it soon played in com- 
merce and the world's progress, may be ascribed to Prince Hen- 
ry. He encouraged the trafl&c, which, with the love of gold 
and the hatred of the Moors, aroused his countrymen to his pro- 
jects, and insured the promotion of discovery, in so much that 
by the time of the fall of Constantinople, his captains had 
reached Cape Verde, lat. 14° 45' N., probably a few degrees be- 
yond, and had exploded the old theory of a boiling belt about 
the equator. 

In all ages there had been a prevailing notion that one might 
sail round Africa ; but when once it was demonstrated that Por- 
tuguese sailors could cross the equator and survive, Prince 
Henry's vague idea of reaching the land of spices by this route 
was confirmed. At all events, he was schooling hardy sailors, 
and training them for bolder work, so that soon after the date 
of the fall of Constantinople, Italy and Portugal had reached that 
turn for adventure and enterprise, which spread like wildfire 
throughout the other states of Europe, and caused the entira 
revolution in the commerce of the world. 

In 1453, Columbus was a lad of six years at Genoa, Vespucci 
of two at Florence and John Cabot a youth at Genoa (?) The 
new learning at once took deep root. When these three Itahan 
boys became men, behold how changed ! The sciences of mathe- 



24 

matics, astronomy, and navigation had grown with their growth, 
and developed with marvelous rapidity. The press had spread 
broadcast the learning of the ancients. The secrets of the earth 
were inquired into and revealed. Many islands of the Atlantic 
had been discovered and described, and sailors knew the coasts 
of Europe and Africa from Iceland to Cape Yerde. But above 
all, the knowledge of the sphericity of our earth was no longer 
confined to philosophers. Alexander had told Aristotle what 
he knew of the East, and Aristotle had written down that there 
was but a small space of sea between Spain and the eastern 
coast of Asia. Strabo had said that nothing stood in the way 
of a westerly passage from Spain to India but the great breadth 
of the Atlantic Ocean ; but Seneca said this sea might be passed 
in a few days with favorable winds. Pomponius Mela and 
Macrobius put in like testimony, with certain difficulties about 
passing burning zones, and the earth being shaped like an egg 
floating in water. All these opinions were rehashed and di- 
gested by Ptolemy of Alexandria, in the second century, who 
first properly reduced the globe into 360 degrees of latitude and 
longitude. In latitude he was as correct as he was incorrect in 
his longitude. Roger Bacon, an Englishman, again summar- 
ized these theories in his Opus Ifajus, in the thirteenth century ; 
and in the fifteenth century, Pierre d'Ailly, a Frenchman, re- 
viewed the whole question, bringing together the opinions of 
the ancient writers named, as well as the fathers of the church, 
including modern philosophers, travelers, and theologians, es- 
pecially Roger Bacon, Marco Polo, and Grerson, and gave to the 
world his well-known Imago Muyidi. This celebrated work, fin- 
ished in 1410, was afterward the guide, companion and friend 
of Columbus. The learned author was for three years Provost 
of the ancient Ecclesiastical College of St Die in Lorraine, away 
up in the Vosges Mountains, in the remotest corner of France. 
This was on the very spot where, nearly a century later, in the 
Gymnasium within the same precincts, a confraternity of some 
half dozen earnest students, lovers of geogi"aphy, of whom the 
poet Mathias Ringman was the soul, in a little work called Cos- 
mographi(B Introduction printed there in the kalends of Ma}^, 1507, 
suggested that the Mundus Novv^ of Vespucci should be named 
America, after a man, inasmuch as Europe and Asia had been 



25 

named after women. Thus a little mountain town of France 
first gave aid and comfort to Columbus and afterwards a name 
to the New World. 

As early as 1474, Paul Toscanelli, a learned physician of Flor- 
enc"e^ sent to Columbus a Chart made after the narrative of Mar- 
co Polo, and was in correspondence with him on these very- 
subjects, showing that even then the plans of Columbus were 
maturing. In 1478, the great geographical work of Ptolemy, 
with the twenty-seven beautiful copper plate maps, was printed 
at Rome, and about the same time many other of the ancient 
historians, poets, philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers , 
saw the light. The Imago Mundi was printed at Louvain, in 
1483, and there still exists at Seville, Columbus' own copy, with 
manuscript notes said to be his, discovered and described about 
forty years ago by our countryman, Washington Irving. 

Meanwhile, the work of discovery and exploration was ear- 
nestly pursued by the Portuguese. In 1454 Prince Henry se- 
cured the services of Cadamosto, an intelligent Venetian, well 
acquainted with the trade of the Mediterranean and the East, 
and sent him down the coast of Africa, where he reduced the 
explorations and the trade to order, and pushed southward the 
discoveries to the Cape Verde Islands by 1460, the year of Hen- 
ry's death. By 1462 Pedro de Cintra had crept down the coast 
to some 300 miles beyond Sierra Leone. In 1463 Gibraltar 
was captured by Spain from the Moors. Kings Alphonso and 
John continued the African discoveries with so much energy 
that, after Diogo Cam's passing Congo in 1484, the bold captain, 
Bartholomew Dias, reached the Cape of Grood Hope, and looked 
beyond it in 1487, thus completing with mai-velous perseverance 
an exploration of some six thousand miles of coast line in sev- 
enty years. Bartholomew Columbus was in this last expedition. 

Meanwhile King John had sent overland through Egypt Pe- 
dro de Covilham, to India and Eastern Africa to gain informa- 
tion and report. In 1487 he reported that he had visited Ormuz, 
Goa, Calicut, etc., and had seen pepper and ginger, and heard 
of cloves and cinnamon. He visited the eastern coast of Africa, 
went down as far as Sofala, and returning northward, sent a 
message to King John that he had learned for certain that if 
Dias should pursue his course round Africa he would reach 



26 

India over tlie Eastern Ocean via Sofala. This theoretical dis- 
covery of Covilham exactly coincided with the practical one of 
Dias. 

All these events were but leading up to the grandest discovery 
the world ever knew, but it is difficult to trace the precise origin 
and the gradual development of the plans of Columbus. We 
know, however, that at the early age of fourteen he went to sea, 
educated vnth small knowledge of Latin and less Greek ; and 
in 1474, at the age of twenty-seven, was in correspondence with 
Toscanelli, and became the father of Diego, the boy for whom, 
some ten years later, he begged a night's lodging at the Convent 
of La Rabida. 

By the year 1487, when the mystery of a path to India 
around Africa was solved, Columbus had not only completely 
worked out his great idea of sailing West to find the East ; but 
had offered his services in cariying it out, first to his native city, 
Genoa, without success, and had two years before brought it 
to Spain fi'om Portugal where his proposals had been openly 
spurned and ridiculed, but treacherously though unsuccessfully 
tested. It is tolerably certain that much of his time had been 
spent in active and practical maritime service, for he had been 
down the coast of Africa as far as El Mina ; had resided at 
Porto Santo, one of the out-lying Portuguese islands of the At- 
lantic, the daughter of whose first governor had become his wife ; 
had visited England and Iceland, and was acquainted with the 
whole of the Mediterranean. His brother Bartholemew had 
been a chart-maker at Lisbon, and was his advocate at the court 
of Henry VIL 

We know from the writings of his son Ferdinand that Colum- 
bus was both a practical and a learned mathematican as well as 
navigator. He had read probably all the compilations named 
above, and his own experience, together with what he had learned 
fi'om the Portuguese, had enabled him, with his Marco Polo in 
his pocket, to sift all the vague and contradictory notions of the 
ancients as to the Antipodes and the shape of our earth, as well 
as to cypher out a theory of his own. For seven long years, 
after being worn out and disgusted elsewhere, he danced attend- 
ance on the Spanish court, with no fortune but his idea ; some- 
times threadbare and barefooted, ever pressing his suit, never 



27 

flagging in liis confidence, questioned and ridiculed by com- 
missions of geographers and scientific men, without ever being 
able to penetrate the conservative ignorance of the learned and 
courtly, or, as he complained, to convince any one man how it 
was possible to sail west to reach the East. But Time was 
working for him then, as it is now for Interoceanic Communi- 
cation. 

The fortieth year from the fall of Constantinople, the forty- 
fifth of the age of Columbus, witnessed the death of Lorenzo 
de Medici ; but other suns were rising. Copernicus, in the far 
north, was in his twentieth year ; Erasmus, his twenty-fifth ; 
Cortez, his seventh ; and Luther, his tenth. Martin Behaim, the 
old geographer of the Azores, aged sixty -two, was home on a 
visit to his native city of Nuremberg, from which the tide of 
commerce was ebbing. Here, in 1492, he made his famous globe 
of the whole world, as if to lay down upon it all the knowledge 
(and all the ignorance) of the geography of the earth, prepara- 
tory to the opening of new books. The same eventful year 
witnessed the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, the opening 
of the Mediterranean, and the discovery of America. Moham- 
edanism received its first check, and Christendom received a 
New World. 

These three Italian boys had become men. When Columbus 
had balanced his egg for Spain, it was easy for Vespucci and 
the Cabots to do it for Portugal and England. Italy, whose 
noble sons did this in foreign service, never acquired a foot of 
the newly discovered lands for herself, yet how much of the 
honor was and still is hers. 

In 1493, within three months from the return of Columbus, 
Alexander YI, a Spaniard, a Pope of not a year's standing, 
wishing to reward Ferdinand and Isabella, for their struggles 
in expelling the Moors, divided our globe into two parts, by a 
line of demarcation passing from pole to pole, one hundred 
leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde islands, giving to 
Spain all she should discover within 180^ to the west of it, 
lea\dng to Portugal all her African discoveries and the Indies 
for 180° east of it. 

But poor Portugal, that had been struggling seventy years 
in the dark in her circuitous route to India round Africa, jeal- 
4 



28 

oils of tlie new short cut of Columbus, which had been offered 
to her and refused, protested against the position of this merid- 
ian. It was finally settled in the treaty of Tordesillas, of June, 
1494, with the Pope's approval, that the line should stand at 
three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Azores. Had 
the King of Portugal's geographers and pilots advised him to 
contend for a line farther east instead of farther west, he would 
have received within his half the Moluccas and the other Spice- 
ries. As some compensation for this geographical blunder, how- 
ever, he secured a foothold in Brazil. Both nations were now 
running a race of discovery of India by divers routes. By India 
is here meant all the East beyond the Ganges, including China, 
Cathay, Mangi, Japan, and the Spice Islands. The acquisitions 
of the Spaniards were named the West Indies, while those of 
the Portugese were called the East Indies. 

Never was great discovery more modestly announced. " A 
Letter of Christopher Columbus, to whom our age is muxih indebted, 
respecting the Islands of India beyond the Ganges lately discov- 
ered,'" dated February, 1493. Columbus thought his success 
complete. He aimed at Zipangu, or Japan, and to his dying 
day in 1506, believed that he had found it nearly where his cal- 
culations had placed it, but never was man more mistaken, and 
never did mistake produce greater results. Believing our earth 
to be a globe, Columbus reasoned correctly that by sailing west 
he would come to the East of Marco Polo, but from want of 
knowledge of longitude, he, like everybody else, from Ptolemy 
down, was vastly deceived as to the size of the globe. From 
Cadiz to the Ganges the distance had been computed from the 
days of Alexander at about 180°, or half round the globe. 
From the Ganges to the Corea and Cathay, and thence to 
Zipangu fifteen hundred miles more, the distance was also 
exaggerated by Marco Polo. So that, still going east, the dis- 
tance from Zipangu to Cadiz was calculated to be about equal 
to the space from Palos to Saint Domingo. Upon this error in 
longitude hung no doubt the problem of circumnavigating the 
globe, for had Columbus suspected the real distance to Japan 
by the west, he would never probably have ventured to pene- 
trate the "sea of darkness," or have found sailors bold enough 
to accompany him. The actual distance from San Francisco to 



29 

Hong Kong is nearly one-third more than Columbus had reck- 
oned it from Spain to Japan. 

The sensation produced throughout Europe by this discov- 
eiy of a short and direct route to India was great, but for 
nearly forty years nobody suspected the truth. The simple 
letter of Columbus in various editions, in prose and verse, was 
about all that was published for ten years, but the intelligence 
gave a new impulse to maritime discovery and commercial 
enterprise. Columbus, with full honors, sailed in 1493, with a 
well equipped fleet to explore his Eastern Archipelago. He 
returned to Spain in June, 1496. Juan de la Cosa, author of 
the world-renowned portolano of 1500, went with him as Master 
of Charts in this second voyage. They proceeded directly to 
Dominica, one of the Windward Islands, thence to Porto Eico, 
St. Domingo, south side of Cuba, Jamaica, &c. 

The Portuguese now redoubled their energies, and in 1497-98, 
Yasco da Gama, just ten years after Dias' discovery of the Cape, 
circumnavigated Africa and reached Calicut. The same year 
John C(i)bot under a Patent of Henry VII, dated March 5, 
1496, in trying for a short cut to Cathay by the northwest, dis- 
covered certain islands, probably in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
and took possession, supposing them to be off China, and 
erected conjointly the flags of England and Venice, on the 24th 
of June, 1497. 

The next year Sebastian Cabot, under a supplemental license 
dated February 8, 1498, sailed again with the view of plant- 
ing a colony and promoting trade, but no contemporary ac- 
count of the voyage being known, it is difficult to extract any 
reliable information of this failure from the confused gossiping 
reports that have come down to us. The discoveries of 1497 
were in 1498 reported to the kings of Spain by their vigilant 
ambassador in London, with the intimation that he had seen 
John Cabot's chart, and would send home a copy of it. What 
steps followed it is difficult now to trace, but the result appears 
to be that Henry VII, never following up the discoveries after 
1498, Sebastain Cabot remained quietly at home till after the 
death of Henry, when in 1512 he took service under the king 
of Spain, permitting his English and Venetian rights of dis- 
covery and plantation to lapse. Thus ended the first English 
and Venetian attempts to reach Cathay by the northwest. 



80 

On tlie SOtli of May, 1498, in his third voyage, Columbus 
first touched tlie continent of America in Yenezuela, though 
some contend that Vespucci had anticipated him by nearly one 
year. The natives called it Paria, and Columbus reasoned him- 
self into the belief that it was Paradise, whence our first parents 
had been driven. In 1499, Vicente Yauez Pinzon and Alonzo 
de Ojeda, private traders, with the latter of whom was Vespucci 
on his second voyage, visited Brazil under Spanish flags ; and 
in 1500 Brazil was discovered accidentally (?) by Cabral, in 
that great fleet which the success of Gama had called forth. 
He was blown out of his course on his way to India, and took 
possession for the Portuguese. Portugal thus gained undis- 
puted possession of Eastern Brazil by rule of ignorance of 
longitude, claiming it as hers because it was east of the line of 
demarcation. All the science of Spain at that time could not 
disprove this, and therefore Pinzon abandoned it to the Portu- 
guese. 

The same year the Portuguese hearing of the voyages of 
the Cabots, and probably suspecting irreverence in the Eng- 
lish for Papal bull lines of demarcation, sent Gaspar Corte- 
real to follow in their track, who returned in the fall of 1500. 
Between May 15 and the 8th of October, 1501, a second voyage 
with two ships was made by Gaspar Cortereal, and laborers 
(slaves) brought back to Lisbon, but Gaspar himself never 
returned. A third voyage was undertaken by Miguel Cortereal 
from Lisbon to the northwest the 10th of May, 1502, in search 
of his brother, but no tidings ever came back. Then the king 
dispatched two more vessels to cruise in search of the missing 
ones, but they returned without any trace of the lost brothers, 
and thus ended the Portuguese attempts to reach Cathay by 
the northwest. 

In 1501 New Granada, Darien, and Panama were taken pos- 
session of for the Spanish by Bastides, and in 1501-2 Vespucci 
explored the coast of Brazil for the Portuguese, it is said, as far 
as 50^ S. lat, within two or three degrees of the strait, and in 
1502 there was written an account of his expedition, which was 
soon after printed, under the title of Mundus Novits. The 
years 1502 to 1504 were occupied by Columbus in his fourth 
and last voyage, in which he was accompanied by his brother 



31 

Bartholomew, and Ms son Ferdinanclo who afterwards wrote a 
life of his father. He explored the coasts of Central America 
from Truxillo in Honduras to Darien, still looking for the 
Granges and inquiring for the home of the Grand Knhn. An 
account of this voyage, coming down to July 7, 1503, was 
printed at Venice in 1505. y 

In 1502 Valentim Fernandez, a German, attached to the 
household of the ex-queen of Portugal, edited and printed at 
Lisbon a collection of voyages in the Portuguese language, 
comprising Marco Polo, Nicolo Conti, Santo Stephano, &c., 
with a view of stirring up the people to a more lively interest 
in the commerce and navigation of the Indies. The success of 
Columbus and the Cabots is referred to, and the speedy return 
of Cortereal from the north, from his second voyage, is expected. 
This magnificent folio volume, the first important book (not 
biblical) printed in Portugal, must have had a powerful effect 
in drawing popular attention to the land of spices. It was the 
first collection of voyages printed in the vernacular tongue, and ! 
could be read by all the unlearned who had a penny to venture. 
It was translated into S|)anish, and printed at Seville in 1503. 
No rarer books are now known to geographers. In May, 1507, 
the four voyages of Vespucci were published for the first time 
together, in Latin, at St Die, in France, as before stated, as an 
appendage to a little work on cosmography, a science which 
now began to assume new and startling importance. 

On the third of November, the same year, there was pub- 
lished in Italian, at Vicenza, a most important collection of 
voyages under the title, Gountries newly discovered^ and the New 
World of Albericus Vespucci^ containing accounts of the voy- 
ages of Cadamosto to Cape Verde, in 1454:-5 ; of de Cintra to 
Senegal, in 1462 ; of Vasco da Gama, in 1497-1500 ; of Cabral, 
in 1500-1 ; of Columbus (three voyages) 1492-1498 ; of Alonzo 
Negro and the Pinzons ; of Vespucci (four voyages) ; of Cor- 
tereal, &c. This work was the next year, 1508, printed in Latin 
and German. 

All these new geographical works hitherto printed, it will be 
perceived, pointed to the same thing, enlightenment of the 
public as to India beyond the Ganges, and how to go and trade 
thither. In 1508, for the first time in print, all these discov- 



32 

ei'ies were collected and laid down in a beautiful copper-plate 
map, by Joliann Euysch, a German wbo had probably* visited 
the new found islands with the Cabots, and knew well what he 
was doing. It appears in the Ptolemy of 1508, published at 
Rome, accompanied by A new Description of the World, and the 
new Navigation of the Ocean from Lisbon to India, hy Marcus 
Beneventanus. A careful study of this map and its descriptive 
text, if we exclude all subsequent publications, and look at 
the world as seen by the geographers of that day, will greatly 
aid us in clearing up many apparent inconsistencies. 

Ruj'^sch lays down three distinct and independent fields of 
discovery. First, the Archipelago of Columbus in the center, 
filling a space of above a thousand miles from north to south, 
and open to India. This part of the map was no doubt laid 
down from Columbus' own letter, the only authority, in 1507, 
existing in print. He had, indeed, coasted along Paria from 
Trinidad westward, in June, 1498, as Pinzon, Ojeda, and others 
did subsequently, supposing it to be another large island, or 
part of the mainland of Cathay, but nothing of this had then 
been printed. Second, the Mundus Novus of Yespucci, being 
the eastern coast of South America from Darien to Upper Pat- 
agonia, one vast Island with an unknown background. The 
authority for this was what has since been called Yespucci's 
" Third Letter," first printed at the end of 1502, or probably 
early in 1503. And third, the discoveries of the Cabots and 
the Cortereals in the north, represented by them as part of the 
mainland of Asia. This portion of the map is only Marco 
Polo's description of Cathay extended considerably to the 
northeast, and modified by the experience, probably, of Euysch 

* Beneventanus says "Joannes vero Ruisch Germanus Geographorum meo 
judicio peritissimus, ac in pLngendo orbe diligentissmus cujus adminiculo in hac 
lucubratiuncula usi sumus, dixit, se navigasse ab Albionis australi parte ; et tamdiu 
quo ad subparallelum ab subajquatore ad boream subgradum, 53, pervenit ; et in 
eo parallelo navigasse ad ortus littora per angulum noctis atque plures insulas lus- 
trasse, quarum inferius descriptionem assignabimus." Anglice : But John Ruyseh, 
of Germany, in my judgment a most exact geographer, and a most painstaking 
one in delineating the globe, to whose aid in this little work I am indebted, has 
told me that he sailed from the south of England, and penetrated as far as the 53d 
degree of north latitude [straits of Belle Isle], and on that parallel he sailed west 
toward the shores of the East [Asia], bearing a little northward [per anglum Twdis] 
and observed many islands, the description of which I have given below. 



38 

himself, and tlie information lie gathered from the Bristol men, 
when he was with them in 1497-8 and the discoveries of the 
Cortereals.* 

Columbus had placed his discoveries in the Indian Archipel- 
ago beyond the Granges, and the world accepted the names he 
gave to the separate islands. No new general name was required. 
The discoveries of the Cabots and the Cortereals being also in 

* The chart of Juan de la Cosa, representing the then known world bearing the 
date of 1500, is not overiooked, but its significance, so far as the coast line of the 
United States is concerned, has been so manifestly distorted by every one who has 
described it, from its discovery by Humboldt in the library of Baron Walckenaer, 
nearly forty years ago, down to the present day, that the writer hesitates to venture 
his opinion. But by long study and comparison of tliis with other early maps, es- 
pecially with those of Ruysch and Peter Martyr of 1508 and 1511, he is convinced 
that the coast line, from the most westerly of the five English flag-staffs marking 
the extent of Cabot's discoveries southward and westward, to a point west of Cuba, 
precisely like the map of Ruysch seven or eight years later, is laid down as the 
northeastern coast of Cathay, from the descriptions of Marco Polo. If our Maine 
friends, therefore, will place behind their red line border, Marco Polo's name Mangi, 
they win see that this territory is farther "down East" tlian is generally supposed, 
being indeed eastern Asia. The word Cuba, instead of Juana, the name given by 
Coliunbus, and the fact that it is represented as an island have been strenuously 
objected to by geographers, but both these objections will be answered in another 
place. [See explanatory preface.] 

La Cosa perished in Ojeda's mad expedition in Dec, 1509. He was a clever fel- 
low, and a great favorite, and used to boast that he knew more of the geography 
of the new lands than did Columbus hhnself. Indeed, of all others, says Peter 
Martyr in 1514, his charts were the most esteemed. His knowledge and experience 
were great, for he had been, between the years 1493 and 1509, on no less than six 
exploring expeditions, either as Master of Charts or commander, with Columbus, 
Ojeda, Yespucci, and Bastides, and had visited repeatedly the entire coast, from Paria 
to Uraba, and thence on his own accoimt, north to the middle of Yucatan, as well as 
most of the islands in Columbus' vast Archipelago. "When with Bastides, in 1501-2, 
he found that the Portuguese were meddling on the wrong side of the line of de- 
marcation, endeavoring, probably, to find a shorter route to Calicut via Darien, and 
therefore, on his return to Spain, La Cosa was sent to Lisbon to remonstrate against 
this enroachment. He was there imprisoned and was not released till August, 1504. 
Nothing daimted, the next year, 1505-6, he went on an exploring and trading ex- 
pedition of his own to Uraba and Panama, and on another similar one in 1507-8. 
On the 11th of November, 1509, he embarked with Ojeda from Hispaniola, and per- 
ished soon after. From this it will be seen that he might be in Spain chart-making, 
from June to October, 1500 ; from September, 1502 to 1504, autumn, (except when 
in prison in Lisbon); and again parts of the years 1506-7, as well as parts of 
1508-9. 

La Cosa had, therefore, ample time, if necessary, to touch up his great chart of 
the world, made and dated in 1500, but a careful examination of the whole chart will 



34 

the East, were so recognized as tliej placed tliem, and required 
no new general name, but their names of particular localities, 
such as Terra ISTova and Bacalaos, were adopted. But as to the 
New World described by Vespucci, the case is different. This 
large country was undoubtedly new, and as his was the first de- 
scription of it printed, his friends of the Vosges Mountains, 
lovers of geography, sought very properly, in 1507, to compli- 
ment him by giving it, instead, the beautiful name America. 

show that it gives no information later than its date. The date is positive, and 
there is probably no reason to doubt it. But as his own discoveries and explora- 
tions west of Mont San Eufemia towards Uriba, Darien and Panama made from 
1501 to 1508 are not laid down, is it not probable that the chart had passed out of 
the maker's possession, and was therefore beyond his reach for retouching? There 
are many other points for discussion, but as the writer has never had under his eye 
the original chart, but judges only from M. Jomard's excellent colored fac-simile on 
three double elephant folio sheets, he feels that he is treading on ticklish ground. 
The fac-similes (greatly reduced in size) given by Humboldt, Ghillany, Lelewel, Kohl 
and others, are in many respects defective, and tend to mislead the student, inasmuch 
as the coloring, and the Unes of latitude and longitude are left out. Some names are 
misplaced and others are misspelled, while many important ones are omitted alto- 
gether. Only the western sheet or third, is given (except by Humboldt). But it 
should not be forgotten that the chart is intended to represent, on a plain, the entire 
globe as far as known in 1500. 

There is a broad green border above and beyond the Ganges, showing that the 
northeast of Asia is terra incognita. The same green also covers what is now North 
and South America, and therefore being unknown the lines and ornaments are not 
to be mistaken for rivers and lakes. But La Cosa had the same authorities up to 
the Polisacus river and bay, in latitude 52° north that Behaun had for his globe 
made in 1492. Hence the two works agree remarkably well, but La Cosa, taking 
advantage of the seven years progress in geography, has attempted to complete 
Asia by laying down its northeastern coast on the other side of the globe, from 
somewhere about Zaiton in the Corea, to and some thirty degrees eastward, be- 
yond the Polisacus river and bay, through the kingdoms of Gog and Magog, and 
thence by a cbeam line connecting Asia with the discoveries of the Cabots and the 
Cortereals. The Polisanchiu river of Fra Mauro in 1457 is the Polisacus of Ruysch 
and the Ptolemies of 1511, 1513, 1535, and 1540. These and the Posacus of 
Schoner, the Puluisangu of Ortelius, and Pulisangu in later maps, are probably 
the Amoor river of our day. At all events, the river and bay are in eastern Asia, 
are about 50° to 52° north latitude, and therefore, America on La Cosa's chart can- 
not extend further west than the left flagstaff, the meridian of Porto Rico. The 
three rivers on the three reduced fac-similes are not in the original map of La 
Cosa, and on Dr. Kohl's fac-simile the important words, Ma/r descubierta por Tng- 
lesss, are placed too low down and half an inch too far west, thus conveying the 
idea that the English had discovered Mangi. 

In short. La Cosa's coast line, from Cuba to the first flagstaff, was intended for 
Asia, and to this day answers better for Asia than America. The student, there- 



35 

This was done witliout the knowledge of Yespucci, and was 
never intended to interfere with the just rights and claims of 
Columbus. The truth is, there was then no other book in print 
describing Brazil but Vespucci's very simple and interesting let- 
ter, written (but in what language it is doubtful) probably im- 
mediately after his return in September, 1502. He gave the 
country he described no name, but the translator into Latin en- 
tled his little tract Mundus Novus. But time wore on, and the 
mistakes of the geographers, as well as those of Columbus and 
Vespucci, are made apparent* 

In 1505-6 northwestern Honduras and Yucatan were seen by 
Solis and Pinzon, and in 1508 Juana (henceforth called Cuba) 
was circumnavigated by Ocampo, thus dispelling the doubt about 

fore, who is not clear on these points is liable to get the Polisacus (sometimes 
speUed Plisacus) Bay, the Gulf of Maine, Rio Gomez, Cathay, Memphramagog, 
Gog and Magog, Quinsay, Cape Cod, Zaiton, Zipangu, Capes Race and Henlopen, 
Mangi, Carolina, Ciambu, Florida, Chicora, Cuba, etc., into a beautiful muddle. 
This is no exaggeration. This utter confusion has been made by compilers and am- 
ateur geographers from the times of Hylacomilus, Apianus, Schoner, Laurence Fries, 
Orontius Fine, and Muenster, to the present day, and no doubt wUl continue so un- 
til geographers look more carefully into the chronology and bibliography of their 
subjects. With these explanations this map is perfectly intelligible, and is recon- 
cilable with other good maps made since the discovery of the Pacific in 1513, when . 
America first began to stand alone in geography independent of Asia. The ques- 
tion next to be asked is, how far west and south did Sebastion Cabot go in 149*7-8 ? 
According to La Cosa and Ruysch, as far probably as the extent of the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence. Compare Hakluyt's map of 1587. Ruysch differs from La Cosa onlj- 
as he had to record also the discoveries of the Cortereals. The remark of Peter 
Martyr, in 1515 (after their eyes were opened to the size and shape of the globe 
by the discovery of the Pacific) about Cabot's reaching on the American coast the 
latitude of Gibraltar, and finding himself then on a meridian of longitude far enough 
west to leave Cuba on his left, is simply absurd, dilemmatize it as you will. Such 
a voyage would have landed him near Cincinnati. 

* A Uttle book, hitherto unknown, written by "Walter Lud, and printed at Stras- 
burg in 1507, entitled SpecuK Orbis Dedaratio, discovered by the writer in 1862, 
has been the means of clearing up many unjust aspersions of historians against 
Yespucci, and explaining the true state of affairs. The book is now in the British 
Museum. The writer, after unsuccessful endeavors for two years to place it in 
America, at the end of March, 1864, had the great satisfaction of calling the atten- 
tion of his friend, R. H. Major, Esq., to it, and pointing out to him the passages re- 
ferring to tlie Vespucci books. How well Mr. Major has used these materials his 
excellent paper on the Manu.script ilap of Leonardo da Vinci, printed in the Arch- 
osologia and his admirable Life of Prince Henry the Navigator, nbimdantly show. 
The next year the \TOtcr called Monsieur Harrisse's attention to it, and in his Bib. 
Ara. Vet it appears, under No. 49. 



its being Zipangu, or part of the main land of Asia. It was 
found to be a long, narrow island, extending east and west, and 
not north and south, like Zipangu. A strange confusion now 
began to seize the German geographers of Strasburg and Vienna. 
They made Cuba an island, and called it Isabella, and then 
transferred all the names from Isabella to a mainland, named 
usually. Terra de Cuba, connecting it with Paria (sometimes 
with and sometimes without a narrow strait) standing bolt up- 
right, and extending to 45° north latitude, with a point like 
Florida, and a gulf to the west of it. This was still supposed 
to be part of Asia, the Florida-like projection being the Corea, 
and the gulf, the sinus GangeticuAi, but in reality existed only 
in the imaginations of the geogi*aphers, like Antilla and San 
Brandan. It holds on their maps about twenty names, some of 
which are found on Euysch's large island or main land west of 
Spagnola, and all of which are found on early maps, especially 
on a Portuguese portalauo compiled by Lelewel under date of 
1501-4. It is in the Ptolemy of 1513, extending up to 45° with 
the three-mouthed Ganges and the Gulf of Ganges, while on the 
globe of Schoner, of 1520, it reaches 51°, and is separated from 
Zipangu by five or six degrees of Balboa's newly discovered 
South Sea which by a strange guess is carried due north to the 
pole. Off to the northeast, in its proper latitude and longitude, 
most of these maps have Terra de Corte Keal as a large island, 
extending probably as far as the Cabots and the Cortereals dis- 
covered — that is, as far west as the meridian of Poito Eico. 
Some maps have it Terra de Cuba, others Paria ; and one, in 
the Margarita PMlosophica of 1515, from a misreading of Colum- 
bus' first letter, Zoana Mela. This fancy continent grew in size 
for nearly a quarter of a century, and was hard to get rid of, 
but the explorations of Ayllon, Cortez, Gomez, Yerrazzano, Car- 
tier, and others, finally di'ove it from our geographies. 

In 1513 Florida, up to Chicora, was explored by Ponce de 
Leon, but it is now certain that it had been discovered two or 
three years before, probably by private adventurers, but perhaps 
by Ocampo in his return voyage in 1508. At all events, it ap- 
pears correctly laid down in the excellent map of Peter Martja- 
printed at Seville April 11th, 1511, under the designation, Isla 
de Beimeni. This map, exhibiting an unbroken coast line from 



87 

Cape Santa Cruz, in Brazil, to the middle of Yucatan, with 
hints of continental lines from Florida northward and westward, 
and one due north of Yucatan, if studied by the light of Peter 
Martyr's tenth book of his second decade, dated December, 1514, 
will foreshadow an approaching eclipse of Spanish enterprise in 
this direction. 

There is little doubt that, at the time of the publication of 
this most important map, the author was still under the belief 
that all these new main lands somehow pertained to the conti- 
nent of Asia. It is true, he informs us that some philosophers, 
and he leaves us to infer that he was one of them, had their sus- 
picions that Columbus was mistaken in his opinion of its being 
Cathay, that the globe was larger than Columbus supposed, and 
that he had not really reached the antipodes, or the kingdom of 
the Grand Khan. But when Columbus, in his fourth voyage, 
brought home some poppinjays, and exhibited their brilliant 
plumage at the court, the good old gossipping letter-writer ac- 
knowledged that the gi'eat Discoverer was right, that such beau- 
tifal birds could come only from the East. Hence, probably on 
this map the lines west of Beimeni and north of Yucatan are 
dream lines from Marco Polo. Indeed, Peter Martyr says, in 
his first decade, finished in 1510 and printed shortly after, that 
all these provinces of Paria, Cariena, Canehiet, Cuquibacoa, 
Uraba, Veragua, and others, are supposed to pertain to the con- 
tinent of India. Florida and Beimini forgotten by Marco Polo, 
and left out of his report ! Shade of Sebastian Cabot ! 

In 1511 Cuba was settled under favorable auspices, and with 
Diego Velasquez as governor over well-to-do colonists, it became 
the base of operations for extensive explorations. On the 8th 
of February, 1517, Francisco Hernandez de Cordova, accom- 
panied by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, he of the True History^ and 
Antonio Alaminos as pilot, who as a boy had sailed with Colum- 
bus, set out on an exploring expedition to the west, to look for 
trade, gold, and the long-sought passage to the land of promise. 
He went by Cape Catoche, the bay of Campeche, as far as Cham- 
poton, and returned. The next year, 1518, on the 5th of April, 
Juan de Grijalva set out on the same route, with a better fleet 
and fuller instructions, accompanied by Bernal Diaz, Pedro de 
Alvarado, and the ever faithfal Palinurus, Alaminos. They 



i--' 



38 

visited Cozumel, Cape Catoche, Campeclie, Eio Tabasco, Poton- 
clian, and named tlie country New Spain. They went as far as 
Panuco. Alvarado was sent back witli tbe sick and heaps of 
gold, but Grijalva himself did not return to Cuba till the 15th 
of November. The journal of this important expedition, kept 
by the chaplain, Diez, was first published in Italian by Zorzi, at 
Venice in 1520, as an appendage to the Itinerario of Varthema. 
Three days after Grijalva's return, Hernando Cortez, on the 
18th of November, 1518, with the instructions in his pocket, 
which the governor sought in vain to recall after the return and 
favorable report of Alvarado, embarked on that most wonder- 
ful expedition of modern history, but he did not really leave 
Cuba for Cozumel till the 10th of February, 1519. He followed 
the courses of Cordova and Grijalva till he reached Vera Cruz. 
From thenxje he ascended the Grand Plateau, and what followed 
is known to all the world. In his Second Relation, dated 30th 
October, 1520, Cortes sent to the Emperor a map of the entir 
Gulf of Mexico, well laid down, which was printed for the first 
time in 1524, at Augsburg, where Charles V had resided. This 
map was incorporated into Orontius Fine's celebrated map of 
the world dated July, 1531, which, compared with the account 
of Hegelian's voyage, and the third and fourth Relations of 
Cortes, led the great geographer and astronomer of Nuremburg, 
Schoner, the next year, 1532, to completely change his mind as 
to the extent of the South Sea, and place it almost entirely 
south of the equator, extending Asia to the north of it from the 
Ganges to Bacalaos, or Newfoundland. On this map of Cortes 
are the names of all the places at which he touched from Yuca- 
tan along the coast as far as Vera Cruz. These are, in order, 
Santo Anton, Roca Partida, Rio de Grijalva, Rio de la Palma, 
Rio de dos botas, Caribes, Santo Andres, Rio de Cocuqualquo, 
Roca partida, Rio de Vanderas, Rio de Alvarado, P. de Sant 
Juan, Seville, Almera, and San Pedro. The Rio de Cocuqual- 
quo was surveyed for many miles, probably with the hope of 
finding an opening to the South Sea. In Fine's map of 1531 
most of Cortes' names are indiscriminately mixed up with those 
of Marco Polo. [PL ill. No. 3 and 4.] 
^ In 1519, Francisco Garay, the Governor of Jamaica, dispatched 
Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda to explore the keys and coasts of 



39 

Florida, but owing to the reefs and contrary winds, he directed 
his way round by the northwest coast by Mobile Bay, and the 
Mississippi river to Yera Cruz, thus completing a full and care- 
ful survey of the Gulf of Mexico. But still the disappointing- 
report to the home government of old Spain was — no thorough- 
fare. Here was the eclipse. Portugal had gained a strong foot- 
hold of eight hundred miles on the coast of Brazil in conse- 
quence of removing the Line westward. In this way Spain be- 
came hemmed in between two lines of demarcation, the one the 
breadth of the Pope, the other the Cordilleras of the new hemi- 
sphere, the one about as impassible as the other, to the Spanish 
mind. 

Thus all these three fields of discovery had by degrees crept 
into one vast continent, extending from the Arctic to the Ant- 
artic Circles, and, instead of being India, the land of fabulous 
treasures, it was an impassable barrier to the approach thither 
by the western route. In 1513, when Vespncci had been in his 
gi'ave a year, and Columbus seven, NuSez de Balboa first saw 
the Pacific Ocean (for many years called the South Sea) from 
the mountain tops of Panama, and soon after navigators began 
to realize that the land of spices was beyond another ocean, even 
more vast than the Atlantic itself The beautiful name America 
now began to swallow up the conjunctives, to spread itself 
eventually all over the new hemisphere, by the same law that 
made the Libya of the Romans succumb to its younger and 
more beautifully named daughter, Africa. 

But Spain, with her new Emperor, her Fonsecas, her Corteses, 
her Pizarros, her Almagros, her Don Quixotes, her affluent mis 
eries, her newly awakened thirst for gold, her Christian zeal, 
and her jealous rivalry for possession of the Spiceries, was not 
the power to bend or break. She redoubled her energies, made 
laws for the regulation of her half of the world, and pious and 
unscrupulous as they were, systematized her efforts. She would 
not permit the Portuguese to seek a passage to their eastern 
possessions through her half by the way of the Isthmuses of 
America, and by the same rule she felt a delicacy in using their 
route by the Cape of Good Hope. Her ambassadors and agents 
in foreign countries manifested no such scruples. 



40 

In 1512 or earlier, Sebastian Cabot was seduced from Eng- 
land, and induced to take service, with liis experience, in Spain ; 
and the same year Juan de Solis, exploring the coast of South 
America, discovered Eio de la Plata, In 1515 he was again sent 
thither with a view of finding a passage to the South Sea, and 
thence to the Moluccas. This expedition returned soon after 
in consequence of the death of Solis, but it led the way to a 
successful one in 1519, under Magellan, a disaffected Portuguese 
gentleman who had served his country for five years in the 
Indies under Albuquerque, and understood well the secrets of 
the Eastern trade. In 1517, conjointly with his geographical 
and astronomical friend, Ruy Falerio, another unrequited Por- 
tuguese, he offered his services to the Spanish court. At the 
same time these two friends proposed not only to prove that the 
Moluccas were within the Spanish lines of demarcation, but to 
discover a passage thither different from that used by the Por- 
tuguese. Their schemes were listened to, adopted and carried 
out. The Straits of Magellan were discovered, the broad South 
Sea was crossed, the Ladrones and the Phillipines were inspected, 
the Moluccas were passed through, the Ca,pe of Grood Hope was 
doubled on the homeward voyage, and the globe was circum- 
navigated, all in less than three years, from 1519 to 1522. Ma- 
gellan lost his life, and only one of his five ships returned to 
tell the marvelous story. The magnitude of the enterprise was 
equalled only by the magnitude of the results. The globe for 
the first time began to assume its true character and size in the 
minds of men, and the minds of men began soon to grasp and 
utilize the results of this circumnavigation for the enlargement 
I of trade and commerce, and for the benefit of geography, as- 
tronomy, mathematics, and the other sciences. This wonderful 
story, is it not told in a thousand books ? The SjDanish eclipse 
was now passed, and America not long after stood boldly out 
as an independent hemisphere. 

Meanwhile the Spaniards were timidly tempting their new 
ocean. The South Sea shores of Darien, Panama, and Veragua 
were explored in 1515 to 1517, as they had been a few years be- 
fore on the north side, with a view of finding a water communi- 
cation from ocean to ocean. Estevan Gomez, another decoyed 
Portuguese pilot in the service of Spain, who went with Magel- 



41 

Ian in 1519 as far as the Straits and there discreditably deserted 
him, returning to Spain in 1521, reported that, though a strait 
had been found by the admiral, it was too remote and too dan- 
gerous for use. It was resolved, therefore, to seek for the sup- 
posed isthmian passage by a more thorough examination of the 
coasts of the Pacific. Accordingly, in 1522, four vessels hav- 
ing been built at Panama, Avila and the pilot Nino set out to 
explore the coast from the Bay of San Miguel to the Gulf of 
Fonseca, expecting to find at the latter place a passage by water 
through to the Gulf of Honduras. 

The same year Cortes, after having subjected the mighty bar- 
baric empire of Montezuma, extending from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific, with characteristic energy set himself to work exploring 
to find a natural water passage, or to make an artificial one. 
He ordered four ships to be built at Zacatula, two for direct 
trade to the Moluccas, and two to search for the strait. The 
voyage to the Moluccas was postponed, but the search for the 
strait was prosecuted so vigorously that, between the expedi- 
tions of Avila and his own, every inlet was explored between 
Colima, in latitude 18-|° North, and the Bay of San Miguel, a 
distance of above 2,500 miles of coast line, but of course with- 
out finding any passage. The following year, 1523, Cortes is 
said to have dispatched five small vessels to reconnoitre the coasts 
from Florida northward, to seek for the passage connecting the 
two oceans. His plan was to send another fleet up the western 
coast that they might meet somewhere north of the German 
geographer's fancy continent, or sail round it. Of course they 
never met. 

In 1524, Pizarro and Almagro, the future conquerors of Peru, 
began their approaches thither from Panama, caiTying with them 
always the impossible instructions to seek out the hidden pas- 
sage, while they were looking for trade and searching for gold. 

The Portuguese in India and the Spiceries, as well as at home, 
now seeing the inevitable conflict approaching, were thoroughly 
aroused to the importance of maintaining their rights. They 
openly asserted them, and pronounced this trade with the Mo- 
luccas by the Spanish an encroachment on their prior discoveries 
and possession, as well as a violation of the Papal Compact of 
1494, and prepared themselves energetically for defense and of- 



42 

fense. On tlic other hand, the Spaniards as openly declared 
that Magellan's fleet carried the first Christians to the Moluccas, 
and by friendly intercourse with the kings of those islands, re- 
duced them to Christian subjection and brought back letters 
and tribute to Caesar. Hence these kings and their people came 
under the protection of Charles Y. Besides this, the Spaniards 
claimed that the Moluccas were within the Spanish half, and 
were therefore doubly theirs. Accordingly great preparations 
were made to dispatch a fleet of six new ships to the Moluccas, 
to establish and protect trade. The Council of the Indies ad- 
vised the Emperor to maintain this fleet there, and to take the 
Spiceries into his own hands, and carry on commerce and nav- 
igation thither through his own exclusive channels, either by 
the strait recently discovered by Magellan, or by some hidden 
one which must soon be disclosed (if any reliance could be 
placed on the geographers) in a more direct line through some 
one of the Isthmuses ; or, failing that, by opening communica- 
tion from the coast of the Pacific. 

Matters thus waxing hot, King John of Portugal begged 
Charles V to delay dispatching his new fleet until the disputed 
points could be discussed and settled. Charles, who boasted 
that he had rather be right than rich, consented, and the ships 
were staid. These two Christian princes, who owned all the 
newly discovered and to be discovered parts of the whole world 
between them by deed of gift of the PojDe, agreed to meet in 
Congress at Badajos by their representatives, to discuss and set- 
tle all matters in dispute about the division of their patrimony, 
and to define and stake out their lands and waters, both parties 
agreeing to abide by the decision of the Congress. 

Accordingly, in the early spring of 1524, up went to this lit- 
tle border town four-and-twenty wise men, or thereabouts, chosen 
by each prince. They comprised the first judges, lawyers, math- 
ematicians, astronomers, cosmographers, navigators and pilots 
of the land, among whose names were many honored now as 
then — such as Fernando Columbus, Sebastian Cabot, Estevan 
Gomez, Diego Ribero, etc. They were empowered to send for 
persons and papers, and did in reality have before them pilots, 
Papal bulls, treaties, royal grants and patents, log books, maps, 
charts, globes, itineraries, astronomical tables, the fathers of 



43 

tlie chnrcli, ancient geogi'apliies and modern geographers, navi- 
gators witli their compasses, quadrants, astrolabes, mathemati- 
cal instruments, etc. For two months they fenced, cyphered, 
debated, argued, protested, discussed, grumbled, quarreled and 
almost fought, yet they could agree upon nothing. 

Whereas in the treaty of 1494 the Portuguese claimed the 
right of placing the hne farther west than 370 leagues from the 
Cape Verde Islands, while the Spaniards contended rather to 
carry it farther east than placed in the original bull, both parties 
now (so much does self-interest sometimes modify arguments of 
right) contended for the very opposite to their former arguments. 
The line, however, had been fixed on and approved by the Pope 
in 1494, and therefore could not be altered by them. But as 
there were 150 miles between the most easterly and most west- 
erly of the Cape Verde Islands, they discussed angrily as to 
which island the line should pass through, each party knowing 
that every mile the line was moved here to the east or west, it 
would necessarily have to be moved just so much at the anti- 
podes, the real field in dispute. 

The debates and proceedings of this Congress, as reported by 
Peter Martyr, Oviedo, and Gomara, are very amusing, but no 
regular joint decision could be reached, the Portuguese declin- 
ing to subscribe to the verdict of the Spaniards, inasmuch as it 
deprived them of the Moluccas. So each party published and 
proclaimed its own decision, after the Congress broke up in con- 
fusion on the last day of May, 1524. It was, however, tacitly 
understood that the Moluccas fell to Spain, while Brazil, to the 
extent of two hundred leagues from Cape St Augustine, fell to 
the Portuguese. The calculation of longitude was the pons as- 
inorum of the Congress, the very problem that had deceived 
Columbus and other experienced navigators a quarter of a cen- . 
tury before. At this time let it be remembered, no geographer 
had given any hint of the fan -like shape of North America, but 
all maps represent it as a narrow strip of land, like that from 
Panama to Tehuantepec, with the South Sea, itself narrow, run- 
ning up to the west of it. 

However, much good resulted from this first geographical 
Congress. The extent and breadth of the Pacific were appre- 
ciated, and the influence of the Congress was soon after seen in 

6 



44 

the greatly improved maps, globes, and cliarts. Many doubt- 
ful points in geography and navigation were cleared up on both 
sides of the globe, and the latitude and longitude of many places 
were defined. Indeed, on the new maps after this, all the dis- 
coveries actually made, up to 1524, were tolerably well laid 
down, but there was a deal of imposition left in the imaginar}' 
lines of those parts of the North American coast which had not 
yet been explored, that is, between Florida and Nova Scotia. 
These false lines were still used by the pilots of both Spain and 
Portugal, probably with a view of blinding the eyes of each 
other, or leading astray the outside barbarians of England, 
France, and Holland, who, though children of the Father, and 
given to trade and adventure, had no share in the Papal gratu- 
ity. The fact that all the coasts of South America, Panama. 
Nicaragua, Honduras, Yucatan, the Gulf of Mexico, and Flor- 
ida, as well as of the Pacific shores from the Gulf of San Mig- 
uel to Colima, that had been surveyed by the Spaniards up to 
this time, were well laid down, both as to latitude and longitude, 
proves almost to a certainty that the indefinite coast line of the 
United States was still imaginary, if not Asiatic. Indeed, the 
old wood-cut maps of 1513 and 1522 of the German geographers, 
with their ideal continent. Terra de Cuba, did service, without 
alteration in the Ptolemies, for a quarter of a century later. 

The return of Magellan's ship Victoria in 1522 aroused the 
spirit of public and private enterprise throughout Spain. 
Innumerable schemes for developing commerce with the Orient, 
and making farther explorations, were proposed and discussed; 
Every pilot, whether amateur or practical, had his card of the 
shortest route to the Indies. Of these schemes no less than 
six in 1523 and 1524 were adopted by the government, and 
promoted wholly or in part by public funds; viz., that of 
Cortes, of Loaysa, of Gomez, of Ayllon, of Cabot, and of 
Saavedra. The impending conflict with Portugal called to- 
gether the Congress of Badajos. That being over hj the 1st 
of June, 1524, and resulting practically in favor of Spain, 
these several plans were matured as fast as practicable. 

Cortes, the first and most active, had no sooner conquered 
Mexico and clenched his conquest than he began his explora- 
tion of the coasts of the Pacific. Without delay he sent 



45 

Alvarado and other captains to the south and southeast, to 
bring into subjection the chiefs of the Province of Oaxaca and 
what is now called the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and, shortly 
after, proceeded thither himself 

Ships were built on the Pacific side, but with many of the 
materials carted over from the Coatzacoalcos River. All the 
details of this scheme, from the 15th of May, 1522, to the 15th 
of October, 1524, are recorded in Cortes' Fourth Relation to 
the Emperor, printed at Toledo, October 20th, 1525. This Re- 
lation in Spain, with the reports of Alvarado and Godoy at- 
tached, gave still another impulse to the new speculations and 
enterprises, as it showed not only the practicability, but the 
probability of opening by artificial means a direct route to the 
Orient in a low latitude and good climate. Cortes was clear- 
headed and far-sighted enough to see that lines of commerce 
must be straight lines, and that the curves of the capes in high 
latitudes are only temporary matters of necessity. Indeed, so 
sanguine was Cortes on these points, that he planted his per- 
sonal hopes and private fortune on and near this isthmus, as 
likely to become the Old World's highway for Oriental com- 
merce. All the lands and private estates selected for himself 
and his posterity, and confirmed to him in 1529 by the Empe- 
ror, were located here in the Valley of Oaxaca, and near Tehuan- 
tepec. He was ennobled in 1529, taking his title, Marquis del 
Valle, from his possessions chosen here. To this day they are 
called the Cortes Estates, or the Marquisanas. He and his 
kinsman, Saavedra, had vast schemes for opening communica- 
tion, by means of a ship canal or Roman road, for the transpor- 
tation of merchandise brought hither from the Moluccas and 
other parts of the East for passage or transhipment to Spain. 
How unexpectedly this rational scheme was thwarted will ap- 
pear farther on. 

At the end of 1524 or early in 1525, Estevan Gromez, the pi- 
lot who had been in the East, had started with Magellan and 
deserted him, a delegate to the Congress of Badajos, was the 
first to get off" from Spain. He had boasted that he could find 
a passage to Cathay and the Spice Islands by the north, as Ma- 
gellan had done by the south. He must have seen at Badajos, 
if not before, the maps of Ruysch, with the continent west of 



46 

Spagnola extending to 35° north, and the Hylacomylns map of 
1513, carrying the same ideal continent up to lat. 46°, ending 
with Cape Mar del Oceano, just above Euysch's Cape Helicon 
(probably named from the rumored fountains of Florida). Pe- 
ter Martyr's map of 1511, and Cortes' map of 1520, printed in 
March, 1524, together with the knowledge that Ponce de Leon, 
in 1513, and Ayllon, in 1520, had explored the coast of Flori- 
da up to 33° 40', a little above Charleston ; and it being known 
that Ayllon had another commission in his pocket, dated June 
12, 1523, to explore still further north of Florida ; and his own 
commission being to find a strait between Florida and Barcala- 
os ; these considerations make it certain that Gomez' field of 
search lay between 35'' and 45", or between Norfolk and Cape 
Sable, where, as Peter Martyr expresses it, "he found pleasant 
and profitable countries agreeable with our parallels." Very 
little is known about this unimportant expedition, and no au- 
thentic maps or papers have come down to us. The contempo- 
rary historians give no prominence to it, and veiy few facts about 
it. Indeed fi'om what is at present known, it is very difficult 
to tell whether Gomez sailed up or down the coast, or both, or 
at what points he touched. So little infoiTQation did he bring 
back, that it wou.ld not now be a matter worth discussing if the 
results of the voyage had not been so enormously exaggerated 
by recent writers. 

Let it be borne in mind that Gomez sailed with only a single 
caravel of fifty tons, with perhaps a dozen men, in the dead of 
winter, from Coruna, in lat. 43°, the government contribution 
toward the cost of the fit-out being only 750 ducats, returning 
in November, 1525, after an absence of about ten months, with 
some Indian slaves, whom he had kidnapped against a recent 
law of Spain and the positive instructions of the Emperor, and 
you have the whole story. Oviedo, writing in 1526, says that 
he sailed to the northern parts and found a great part of land 
continuate from that which is called Bacalaos, taking his course 
toward the west to 40° and 41°, from whence he brought certain 
Indians. Would an intelligent pilot sail north with such a 
craft in winter? Might not New England be the " great part " 
of land next to Bacalaos ; and might not the fine tall natives 
of Rhode Island have been kidnapped, part being taken to 



47; 

Cuba for sale, the rest taken to Toledo, tlins consuming the ten 
months, without having gone north of Cape Cod ? Peter Mar- 
tyr says, writing also in 1526 : " He, neither finding the strait 
nor Cathay, which he promised, returned back within ten 
months from his departure. I always thought and presupposed 
this good man's imaginations were vain and frivolous." Her- 
rera, who wrote three quarters of a century later, is hardly more 
favorable to this explorer. 

The reader is referred, by recent writers, to the manuscript, 
map of Ribero of 1529, now preserved at Weimar, for the re- 
sult of Gomez' voyage. But the intelligent reader will see 
with half an eye that this is a partizan map, and intentionally 
deceptive in the coast line between 33° 40' and 50° N. The 
discoveries of the English are thrown into Greenland, and called 
Labrador, while Bacalaos is given to the Portuguese, and cut 
off by the line of demarcation. All the rest of the coast is 
closed up under the names of Gomez and Ayllon, and so given 
to Spain. There is no room left for the discoveries of Veraz- 
zano for the French in 1524. The Spaniards knew of his voy- 
ages, for they had been watching him, and caught him, and in 
1527 hanged him as a corsair. Indeed, the best that can be 
reasonably said of the voyage of Gomez is, that it exploded the 
ideal continent of the German geographers, and, connecting the 
explorations of Ayllon with New England, showed that the 
coast of North America trended continuall}^ eastward, so as 
probably to connect it with the discoveries of the Cabots, and 
thus make the whole coast west of the Line Spanish. 

Lucas Vasquez Ayllon, a lawyer, a Senator in Hispaniola, 
and a man of position, immediately after the survey of the en- 
tire Gulf of Mexico under Grijalva and Cortes, sent an expedi- 
tion up the coast of Florida in 1520, as far as Chicora, explor- 
ing beyond the limit of Ponce de Leon, as far, probably, as 
Cape Fear, seeking for the passage to Cathay. He found a fine 
country, but to Asia no thoroughfare. The next year he re- 
turned to Spain, and was, according to Peter Mart^T, in behalf 
of the Regency of Hispaniola "a long time suitor [to the Coun- 
cil of the Indies] to have leave to depart again into those coun- 
tries, to build a colony there." At length, after the return of 
Magellan's ship Victoria with its glorious news, the Council 



48 

granted his request, and articles of agreement were signed tlie 
12tli of June, 1523, giving him permission, at his own expense, 
to lit out as many vessels as he pleased for the purpose of plant- 
ing his proposed colony, but the usual instructions were inserted 
in his grant, to explore all inlets and islands with a view of 
finding a passage to Cathay. This license, given by Navarrete, 
permitted him to explore as far as 800 leagues to the north of 
Hispaniola. He returned to Hispaniola, built there six fine 
vessels, and, after many delays, sailed with them and above 500 
men and nearly 100 horses, in July, 1526. He went as far 
north as lat. 33° 40', found no strait, and met with nothing but 
misfortunes. The 18th of October Ayllon died, and soon after 
the few survivors, about 150 out of the 500, returned to His- 
paniola, the expedition being a dead failure. Thus ended the 
attempt to plant a colony near the mouth of Cape Fear Kiver, 
and thus ended the Spanish attempts to penetrate to the East 
by the way of the North. Both Gomez and Ayllon had found 
, no gold, and no strait, and even the trees and animals they re- 
sj ported were common in Europe ; whereat old Martyr exclaims, 
" to the south ! to the south ! for the great and exceeding riches 
of the equinoxial ; they that seek riches must not go unto the 
cold and frozen north." The whole story is comprehended in 
Martyr's sentence. North America, by the Spaniards, was never 
considered of any consequence of itself, and was regarded only 
as a barrier or a stepping stone to a richer, older and better 
land. It was necessary, however, to shut it up by a coast line 
west of the line of demarcation, so that other nations might be 
deterred from finding a northern passage to India. 

The Emperor, considering the verdict of the Congress of 
Badajos in his favor, lost no time in dispatching his new fleet of 
six sail and 450 men by the Straits of Magellan, from Coruna, 
on the 24th of July, 1525, under the command of Loaysa, to 
the Moluccas and the Spice Islands, with the view, first, to suc- 
cor the men left there by Magellan's fleet, and then to establish 
a government bureau and to protect its commerce. The Straits 
were passed, and four of the six ships reached the Moluccas ; 
but the story of their long, long sufferings is too long to be told 
here. 

In April, 1526, Sebastian Cabot, who had for years been the 



49 

Pilot Major of Spain — said, Lowever, to have been a better cos- 
mograplier than pilot — after long and ample preparations at Se- 
ville, sailed for the Moluccas via the Straits of Magellan, with 
four well-equipped ships, for the purpose of reinforcing and as- 
sisting the expedition of Loaysa. This expedition was another 
dead failure. For some unaccountable reason, Cabot did not 
deem it prudent to try the Straits of Magellan, but attempted 
to find a passage through the Kio de la Plata. He penetrated 
far into the interior of Paraguay, explored many large rivers 
and fertil provinces, suffered many hardships, lost most of his 
men and ships, and finally, after four years of toil and disap- 
pointment, returned without any favorable results. 

Cortes was kept informed of these several expeditions, with 
a request from the Emperor that he would cooperate with them 
at the Moluccas, by sending a fleet from the western coast of 
Mexico. Accordingly he caused three ships to be built on the 
Pacific, and dispatched them, with 110 men and thirty pieces of 
artillery, under command of his kinsman, Saavedra, from some 
port of Southern Mexico, probably Tehuantepec, Huatulco, or 
Acapulco, on the 31st of October, 1527. This fleet met that of 
Loaysa in the Moluccas, cooperated with it, found the Portu- 
guese strong and resolute, by no means disposed to abandon the 
islands, fought them separately, and fought them together for 
months, nay, for years, never hearing a word from home, being 
cruelly neglected, yet loyal and true, till reduced to a handful, 
some few of the survivors, long after Loaysa and Saavedra had 
died, as well as most of the sub-ofiicers, found their way home 
after twelve years of unspeakable hardships. Thus all these 
six hopeful expeditions brought nothing but disapjDointment. 
The Straits of Magellan were found so dangerous and remote, 
that old Peter, had he lived, would no doubt have again ex- 
claimed as before, " To the north ! to the north ! they that seek 
riches must not go to the dangerous and frozen south !" 

As early as 1526 or 1527, before the extent of these failures 
was known, it became apparent, if the commerce of the East 
was to flourish, it must be by some more direct communication. 
These great difficulties of the extreme North and South deter- 
mined the Spaniards to explore the Isthmuses yet more thor- 
ougly. All the five routes from Darien to Tehuantepec, were 



60 

spoken of then as now, witli the view of constructing immediate- 
ly a canal, road, or portage, deeming it safer and cheaper to tran- 
ship goods, than to carry them round by the Strait. " There are 
mountains it is true," exclaimed the old historian, " but Spanish 
hands, and Spanish enterprise can overcome them." But no Span- 
ish hands could overcome the impolitic blunders of the Emperor. 
There is little doubt that inter-oceanic communication would 
have been opened in 1529 or 1530, by means of a ship canal or 
a turnpike across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, had not the Em- 
peror, who was greatly in want of money, defeated all the 
schemes against the advice of the Council of the Indies, by pawn- 
ing in the treaty of Saragossa to the King of Portugal who had 
just married his sister, the Moluccas for 350,000 ducats. So the 
trade of the Moluccas passing for a time out of the hands of the 
Spaniards, there was no immediate pressure for the completion 
of this great work. The opportunity then lost of securing an 
exclusive transit was never recovered by Spain, but it is reserved 
to us of to-day to make the Isthmus of Tehuantepec the world's 
highway. H. s. 

May 10, 1869. 



LIST OF MAPS AND CHARTS 



n( 



Plate 1 



Chart of the World by Juan de la Cosa, dated 1500, the western third, re- 
duced from M. JoXmard's uncolored fac-simile. The original is in the Royal li- 
brary, Madrid, on leather, colored, size 5 feet 10, by 3 feet 2 inches, described 
in the preceding pages. Humboldt and Lelewel differ as to the continuation of 
La Cosa's coast line of Eastern Asia, cut off a little beyond the Ganges, the former 
supposing tliat La Cosa intended'^to be continued as the Western coast of tlie 
new heraesphere, while the latter thinks it was intended to he continued in the 
coast line of Brasil. 

"^ Plate II 

NO 1 OcEANUS OcciDENTALis SEU Terr^ Nov^, reduced from the Ptolemy 
of 1513, printed at Strasburg in foho. 

No 2 La Carta universale della terra ferma & Isole delle Indie occi- 
dentali, cauata da due carte da nauicare fatte in Sibiha da li piloti della Maiesta 
Cesarea. Venetia, 1534. Reduced to one quarter the size of the unique origi- 
nal in the possession of Mr James Lenox of New York. The two pilots are ,c0 
doubt Fernando Columbus and Diego Ribero whose original charts of 1527 and 
1529, or contemporary copies, are preserved in the military library at Weimar, 
tlie American portions of which have been extracted and published by D'- John 
G. Kohl of Bremen. 

N" 3 Part of the Universalior Co«niti Orbis Tabula by Jolin Ruysch. 
Published in the Ptolemy of 1508, printed at Rome, in folio. See supra pages 
13 and 32. 

Plate III 

N" 1 Map of the New Hemisphere by F. G. Size of the original, dedicated 
to Hakluyt, and issued in his edition of Peter Martyr's Eight Decades, Paris, 
1587, 8vo. It is very rare. Cabot's discoveries are placed north of the Gulf of 
St Lawrence and dated 1496. Virginia is here laid down for the first time, and 
dated 1584. Drake's landing in California is recorded under the date of 1680, 
and the territory assigned to the Enghsh. Frobisher's discoveries are dated 
1576, and given to the EngHsli. 

N" '2 Honter's Globe dated 1542, three continents terminating alike in the 
Southern Ocean. Faria takes the place of Terra de Cuba and is separated from 
Zipangu by a narrow sea. America is confined to South America which is 
represented as a large island. 

N" 3 Orontics Fine's double-hearted Globe dated July, 1531, slightly re- 
duced from the original in the Paris edition of the Novtis Orbis of 1532. 
1 



62 

No 4 Part of tho above mentioned Globe of Okontius Fine of July, 1531, 
reduced to Mercator's Projectioa. The best autliorities seem to have been used 
by Fine in compiling this map, but he has so misread them that his production 
is the culmination of absurdities Yet the best geographers and mathemati- 
cians of his day agree with him. Schoner's Opuscidum Gtographictim, 4°, 1532, 
though intended as a description of his own new and improved globes made at 
Nuremberg, answcs equally well for tho descriptive text of this map. The 
names of places used by Marco Polo in i astern Asia, and those given by Cortes 
in Mexico, are mixed up and all laid down in one country which is called 
farthest India. For this admirable reduction to Mercator's Projection the writer 
is indebted to his friend Mr. J. C. Brevoort, of Brooklyn, who on all occasions 
has liberally opened to the writer his geographical treasures to use as freely 
as if they were his own. 

Plate IV 
NO 1 Extract from the very large Mapa Mundi op Sebastian Cabot of 1544, 
showing the Gulf of StLawrence, Newfoundland. Labrador, Nova Scotia, &c. 
From M. Jomard's facsimile of the original in the Imperial Library of Paris, 
the only copy at present known to exist, reproduced by photo-lithography, and 
and consequently a correct copy. The reader is invited to compare this extract 
with a similar one lately published by Mr J. F. Nichols, City Librarian of Bris- 
tol in his well printed Life and Discoveries of Sebastian Cabot. Out of about 
65 names Mr Nichols' engraver has managed to misspell above 40 of them, some 
of them becoming hopelessly disguised, as /, i,^Capo de arause^ which means 
nothing, instead o{ capo de arecife whicli does have a meaning. It is suspected 
that Mr Nichols' copyists and printer have fallen into similar errors with re- 
gard to the text of his book, and that consequently Sebastian Cabot is elevated 
into a position at the expense of his father, and historical truth, which cannot be 
sustained, without some sort of trustworthy evidence. 
N<» 2 Western portion of tho Typus Umversalis Terre in Reisch's Maroa- 
RITA PniLOSOPHiCA of 1515, evidently copied from the Ptolomy of 1513 with 
the Ganges left out, and Zoana Mela put in. At this period, and for some time 
after, it was the general opinion of the German Geographers, that whatever 
parts of the world were not included in Europe or Africa somehow pertained 
to Asia. The terms Novus Orbis and Mundus Novils were very early applied to 
the new di.scoveries. As early as August, 1495, Peter Martyr wrote de orbe novo 
of Cuba believing it on the authority of a letter from Columbus himself, to be a 
part of Asia, just as more than a thousand years before the Eomans called 
England the new world because it was then as another world to them beyond 
Cadiz. Ovid to Livia honors Germany with tlie title of Netu World. 

Et penitus toto diversos orbe Britannia.— Hrj/i/. 

Serves jterum Cae.sarem in ultimas 

Orbes Brit&naoa.—JIoracc. 

The fact therefore that Giocondi, in translating Vespucci's account of his third 
voyage, called the newly described country, Mundus Novus ^ does not prove that 
by him in 1 504, Brasil was thought to be a new continent independent of Asia. 

N" 3 The New Hemisphere, reduced from Ramusio of 1556, almost the whole 
of it laid down from good authorities except the Atlantic coast line of North 
America, the Asiatic features of which are not eradicated. Terra del Fuego 



53 

is represented as a Southern Continent. The latest Spanish explorations in Cali- 
fornia are carried up to lat. 40° N. and the coast of Labrador extends to 67^°. 

c 
N° 4 Part of Sebastian Muexst^'s Map of the World from the Xnvus Or- 

his of Grynaeus, Basil, 1532. Muenster in this map, as well as in his printed 
description of it, was much behind the times. The map is of the school of 
Bernard Sylvanus 1511, of Gregory Reisch 1515, of Apian 1520, and Laurence 
Fries of 1522. There is no trace of Peter Martyr's map published in 1511, or 
that of Cortes priuted in 1524, nor had Magellan disturbed his conservatism. 
The discoveries of the Cabots and the Cortereals are represented as an island 
and called Terra Cortesia. The German geographers' fancy continent, Terra de 
Cuba extends due north and south, nearly ten degrees wide, from lat. 1 0° to 
48° N. with Columbus' Gulf of Ganges to the west of Spagnola. America is 
still confined to South Ameiica, of which Farias and Prisilia are provinces. 

N° 5 Peter Martyr's Map of the discoveries of Columbus, Vespucci and oth- 
ers, made in 1510, and published in his First Bacade, April 11, 1511, reduced 
from the very rare original which belonged to the writer in 1 845, but is now 
in the possession of Mr John Carter Brown of Providence. This is by far the 
most authentic, accurate and important printed map of the coasts from Cape 
St Roque to Honduras, including Columbus' Archipelago, that has come down to 
us, of all those known printed prior to 1634. 

No 6 The World enlarged from Porcacchi of 1576. The Province of Anian is 
in Eastern Asia, and Labrador occupies all New England and beyond is Florida. 
The lakes are represented by one large one, some 600 miles long, in Canada, 
divided by a river flowing southeast into the Atlantic, in latitude 41°. This will 
do for the Hudson river. In separating Asia from America, several of the 
Asiatic Provinces are set off to California. The Southern Continent has grown 
to an enormous extent. 

N" 7 Cortes' Chart of the Gulp op Mexico sent to Charles V in 1520, 
and printed at Augsburg in 1524. Size of the original in the possession of Mr V*- ■'-' Y '^' ^'''^ ' 
James Lenox. This and Peter Martyr's Map are incorporated Ijodily into 
£^jr«w«- Fine's map of 1531, and laid.down with Marco Polo's ns part of Eastern 
Asia. 

Plate V 

Part of a Portuguese Portolano, not dated, but circa 1514 (?) extracted from 
Kuntzman's fac-simile of the original at Munich. A very important chart, but 
manifestly not well understood by the several writers who have described it. 
Among the flags, Spanish, English and Portuguese, set up to mark the nation- 
alities of the several possessions there are two Mohammedan ones showing incon- 
testably that the compiler of the chart supposed these countries to belong to 
Asia. One is in Nicaragua and the other in Venezuela. Cuba is represented as 
an island, and thrown down to its proper latitude, while Houdur.is like Peter 
Martyr's is carried too high. Dr. Kohl has misled many by putting on his 
reduced fac-simile the name of Yucatan, which is not on the original. There 
are indications of the discovery of the South Sea in 1513, in the short coast line 
south of Darien and in the two canoes of Indians. But this part of the chart 
is evidently an after thought, for there are indications of names being cut out 
or curtailed to make room for the^new discoveries, which circumstance, together 



54 

with the namo Tera Rimini, instead of Florida, tends to sliow that the original 
map was made before the expeditions of Balboa and Ponce de Lcoa iu 151 S. 
Indeed by leaving honestly open tlie undiscovered coast between Bacalaos west 
of the line of demarcation, and Tera Bimini, the map clearly resembles that of 
Bernard Sylvanus with his Regains domus in the Venetiac Ptolemy of 1511. 

V Plate VI. 
Tehuantepec Railway Company's Chart of the World on Mercator's Projection: 
siiowing the lines of railway with its connections of steamships ami sailing ves- 
sels, with the pi-orainent parts of the world as they are this year, 1 8G9. 

CONCLUSIOX. 

All these thmgs disjoined and crannned as they are in this little book, to the 
indifferent reader will no doubt seem very siniple, insomuch that some will think 
that they liavo known them all along. But simple as they are if credited and 
adapted, they will require a careful revisi(m of our whole f;i>urse of study in 
early American geography and history. 



Te?,nc, LaUS DeO. 



